


Where You've Been

by Nny



Series: Wanting To Build [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Circus Performer Clint Barton, Clint Barton's Farm, Found Family, M/M, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:34:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22244926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny
Summary: Clint didn’t want Barney or Rumlow or Trick or even Konrad to manipulate him into doing something that turned his stomach, and as much as he was growing to love Natasha he knew that - if sheneededto - she’d do exactly the same. Going back to SHIELD would mean putting the control back in someone else’s hands, and he liked the calluses that the hard work thathe chosehad put on his own.*An AU in which Clint begins to build himself a home.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Series: Wanting To Build [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1601263
Comments: 240
Kudos: 586





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With huge thanks to everyone who's read this over the time I've been agonising. Especially to Dr Grlfriend for beta and sweet comments, to Kangofu_CB for tireless cheerleading and emotional support, and to Flawedamythyst for working so hard to make this so much better.

Clint stepped out of his trailer and walked straight into another world, a world half a step sideways from most people’s normal. The music was playing and the lights were on, and the murmuration of the crowds just a trailer's width away always made everything this side of it seem a little unreal. 

Konrad and Dirk were fighting again, bad enough that they couldn’t share a trailer, so Clint had to hop over a tent's ropes at the bottom of the trailer steps. He caught his balance again against the back of Nancy's food truck, the thick smell of grease hanging heavy in the air. Clint ducked to scratch under Fleabag's chin where he was all stretched out, tied up and straining for sausages, and he spared Clint a grin and a lick to his fingers before his attention was captured again by the open back door, the bright lights inside the truck, the hissing of the grill. 

Nancy's broad back, clad in what could generously be termed cook's whites, blocked out a bunch of the view through the door, but Clint could see past her to a procession of smiling faces, lit unevenly by the bright trucks and the dimmer bulbs strung overhead. Somewhere Sven's violin was wailing, layering over the laughter, the drums, the goddamn steam organ that fucked with Clint's ears more than maybe anything else. 

"Got a spare burger, Nance?" he yelled, and got a raised middle finger in reply, but he didn’t take it to heart - they all knew not to bother _talking_ to him until the circus settled back to sleep, at least nowhere outside of the strange muffled quiet before shows, under the raised rows of seats. 

Clint shrugged and swung around the side of the truck, joining the river of people and revelling, a little, in the anonymity of it all. He coulda been anyone in this crowd, coulda been looking out for a best friend, a high school enemy, a sweetheart. He paused for a moment at one of the booths, bright letters taunting him to Test Your Strength, and got glared away by Czeska 'cos he wasn't so great at hiding how he knew the trick. Mark, on the other hand, he beckoned Clint over with a subtle jerk of his head. 

"How about this young man," he said, projecting from the diaphragm, bellowing over the crowd. "You look like a lucky guy. Three darts, three cards, three cards, three darts, couldn't be easier." 

"Sure," Clint said, giving a cocky kinda smirk to the guys around him, a challenge. "Sure, I'll give it a go." 

Had to resist the urge to whip them dead centre. Had to throw a little uncertainly, fighting down the urge to hunch his shoulders defensively when his aim wasn't quite true. 

"There," Mark said, "easy as one, two, three! Who else is gonna step up and give it a try, just two bucks for three darts, step right up here -" 

Clint took the enormous purple snake that Mark unhooked for him, earned himself another glare when he grinned at a harried-looking mother and draped it around the neck of her whiniest child rather than sneaking it back to Mark when the lights'd gone down. 

The air was thick with the smell of cotton candy, popcorn, corn dogs. Clint followed the growling of his stomach, past the Funhouse and Madame Esmerelda's dimly-lit tent; he ducked between two trucks, nearly tripping over poorly-covered power cords in the dimness, heading for the cluster of rickety tables and rusting chairs that surrounded the mess tent. 

Harsh fingers hooked into the neck of his shirt before he could get close, and he turned, resigned, to look into Barney's scowling face. 

"Where the hell were you?" 

Clint considered, for a minute, playing up the incomprehension, 'cos when Barney had to sign he always took a little longer to throw a punch. He shrugged instead, futilely trying to dislodge Barney's hand. 

"Sleeping," he said, sulkily. "You assholes kept me up all night talking about the -" he was cut off abruptly by a hand slapped over his mouth, and he considered for a childish second sticking his tongue out and licking it. Woulda done, if he didn't know where Barney's hand had likely been. 

"Not here," Barney said, leaning in close enough that Clint could smell the beer on his breath. "You were supposed to come hear the plan and -"

"Not interested," Clint interrupted. "C'mon, Barn, you know I don't wanna -" 

"How many?" Barney's smile was easy and friendly enough, if you didn't know how to read him like Clint did. "Between our trailer and here, how many?" 

"Fuck you." 

Barney didn't let up on his grip, though, and his other hand went unerringly to the pockets of the oversized hoodie Clint wore. He pulled out a battered wallet, an expensive watch, a little coin purse with owls on it, and Clint shoved him hard enough that he could pull away. 

"Oh yeah, you're so much better than me," Barney said, the cruel light in his eyes making him look uncannily like their dad. 

"It's not the same," but Clint couldn't meet his eyes. 

"It's exactly the same," Barney said, signing along for emphasis, his rough hands moving sharply through the edges of Clint's vision. "You're coming along tonight, unless you want these ending up on Carson's desk." 

Clint jerked his head up, wide-eyed, and met Barney's sorrowful look. 

"'I didn't wanna tell you,'" he said, the lips Clint was reading pulled a little outta shape by the rueful twist of his mouth, his voice too soft and hesitant to quite hear. "'You gotta understand, boss, I'm just worried about my little brother -'" 

Clint shoved him again, never more goddamn conscious of how much growing he still had to do. 

"Hey," Barney was laughing now, and Clint wanted to punch his stupid smug face. "Hey, I'm not the one being an asshole, here, letting down their only family." In one of the abrupt shifts of mood that had always thrown him off, that had always made their little childhood apartment feel like the unsteady deck of a ship at sea, Barney threw an arm around his shoulder and hauled him in close. Clint hated himself for leaning into it a little. 

"C'mon, Clint," he said, coaxing and perfectly pitched so Clint could pick it up, quiet and clear. "Just this once while Dirk's bein' a fuckin' asshole, and I promise I'm never gonna ask you again." 

"Yeah," Clint said. "That's what you always say."

He shoved away from Barney and ducked back into the dimly-lit path between two trailers, heading back out into the thick of the laughing crowd. He wasn't hungry anymore. 

*

The mirror hung crooked, propped awkwardly against a thick wooden pole, and Clint ducked his head to get a look at the greasepaint that made him almost unrecognisable. He wished he'd been able to get the mask to work out, 'cos even if it had made him feel like he was gonna get heat stroke it'd looked _awesome_. More purple was never a bad thing. 

He shrugged his quiver over his shoulder and held still as Katja sprinkled goddamn glitter on him that he'd still be shaking out of his sheets when they were halfway to Minnesota. 

"Clint!" a familiar voice yelled, and he paused by the drape of canvas that blocked them off from the ring. He rolled his eyes, folded his arms, but couldn't hide the way his posture relaxed a little when Barney came in close, grabbed his hand and slammed their shoulders together almost painfully, same way he had before every show Clint'd ever performed in. "Go show 'em what a Barton can do," Barney said, and Clint grinned, helpless, before turning to jog out to his musical cue. 

He used to wear his aids for this. Hear the roar of the crowd, listen to the ringmaster's patter as he built the suspense for Clint's next trick. Why bother, though, when he could feel the energy, the delight of the audience rising up through his feet? He played their nerves with the string of his bow, holding their breath with his arms tensed. Clint became, for a few moments, something Amazing. Something worthwhile. And then he glanced over to the ring's edge and saw Barney - who should be watching, who always promised he was watching - caught in deep and furtive conversation with Trick. 

Clint kept shooting, kept making every damn shot, but there was a cold stone in his stomach and the magic had gone. 

*

There was gonna be greasepaint left on the inside of his ski-mask. That was all he could think, as he sat in the back of the black paneled van. They hadn't given him the time to finish cleaning up after his second show, and there was gonna be greasepaint on the inside of his ski-mask, and he was gonna need more than a shower to get himself clean. 

"You're lookout," Barney had told him. "It's a nothing job, you're barely involved, you just gotta let us know over the radios if you see anyone coming, alright?" He grinned, clapped Clint on the shoulder. "It's probably not even against the law, right, Captain America?" 

Clint scowled and shoved his hand off, then defiantly slung his bow over his shoulder. They'd made him bring it but he figured there was no way they could make him shoot. 

Barney and Trick were in the back with him, and Clint wasn't used to being with them and still feeling so alone. 

Trick'd taken over mentoring him where the Swordsman had left off, taught him the intricacies of tricks where the Swordsman's style had always hid the lack of skill. Trick had never been a task-master like Duquesne; he had always come off like Clint assumed an uncle would be - fond, boisterous, rough around the edges. Even more than back when him and Barney had been taken into the circus, Trick'd always made him feel like he was a part of something; he’d made him feel included. Grown up. Special. Turned out you put a mask on the man and he was unrecognisable. Cover his smile and even in the darkness you could see the truth in his eyes. 

The van turned off the road and onto a rutted pathway, branches batting at the windshield. Konrad swore softly as he navigated the uneven road, nothing more to light their way than the barest sliver of moon. They pulled up behind a screen of bushes, and when Clint shoved his way out of the back of the van he had a moment's crazy urge to just ditch them here. Start running, don't look back... but where in hell did he have to go? 

And while he maybe still believed that _Trick_ wouldn't shoot him, that _Barney_ wouldn't let him, he wasn't quite convinced about what they’d do from behind the anonymity of their masks. 

The house, when they reached it, was gigantic. Sure, Clint had lived in a trailer for a lot of his life, had been crammed into an apartment before that, but Clint figured that even for houses, this house was _huge_. He counted twenty windows before he got smacked around the head, not quite hard enough to hurt which probably meant it was Konrad. 

_Stay here_ , Barney signed, once he was looking the right way. _Watch_.

_If I see someone?_ Clint signed, and Barney tossed him something small and black that Clint almost fumbled, snagging it at the last second before it fell to the ground and lost itself in the shadows. 

"Okay," Clint murmured, "these are a hell of a lot more impressive than the walkie talkies we had as kids." Barney snorted, and then signalled for Clint to stay. Konrad headed back to the van, and Barney and Trick moved, unnaturally silent, through the bushes and fallen leaves. 

It was surreal, kinda dreamlike, waiting in the dark. Clint lived his life in a world that aggressively fought off the darkness, with colour and noise and endless light, and despite what he was doing here he couldn't help the sense of peace that came from just being able to see the stars. He leaned against the rough bark of a tree and counted them, wondering what it'd be like to sleep out here, wondering if Barney'd maybe let him go camping sometime. 

It was too cold to stay still for long, though. Clint was wearing long sleeves, all black, a pair of thin leather gloves, but the only coat he had was huge and puffy and purple and still hung up on the back of the trailer door; it wasn’t exactly what you wanted for stealth. He tried to move as much as he could without making any noise. It turned into a kind of a game; rolling his feet to try to minimise the sound, ducking under branches, hopping over logs. His breath was coming hard, white against the darkness, when the radio he held crackled to life. 

"Clint, fuck, Clint, they're coming your way. We got two security guards, but there's two more coming." 

Clint held down the talk button, his hand trembling a little, the button almost slipping free. "What the hell d'you expect me to do? What does 'got' mean, Barney?" 

"Stop them." 

It was Trick's voice, this time. The cold tone that meant you'd really fucked this up. Clint found he was shaking his head involuntarily, not prepared to accept what Trick was asking him to do. 

"I'm not -" he said, not even sure if he was holding down the button, "I can't -" 

He was knocked off-balance, almost fell to his hands and knees when Konrad pushed past him from behind, taking over and covering for Clint’s failings even though he was supposed to just stay by the van. He'd always been a big man, but dressed in all black in the darkness he was something out of a nightmare. Clint caught the dull gleam of metal in his hand, and reached forward to grab him, to pull him back. 

Too late. 

Torn with indecision - torn between what he was supposed to do and what he should - Clint chewed on his lip for a moment and then, resolved, slung his bow off his back and nocked, aiming for the flashing light that he knew - from all the jobs that Barney had promised would be the last one - was a hell of a sophisticated alarm. Likely had a line right through to the local police department, and even if it didn’t the wailing would drive Barney and Trick off. Clint took a deep, sour-tasting breath, drew, and shot. He didn't need the wailing of the alarm to know he'd hit the mark. And for a second, the rush of doing the right goddamn thing had him grinning wider than he ever did in the ring. 

He should've run. Of all the mistakes he'd made that night, the most obvious was that moment - he should've run. But instead he stood there like an idiot. Stood there, shoulders squared, like Trick would give the slightest shit about the man Clint had proved he was growing to be. 

Like Trick would do anything but emerge from the trees and stare at Clint like he was nothing but a goddamn inconvenience. Like Trick’d do anything but train his bow on Clint and drop him, an arrow in each shoulder. 

The pain was beyond anything Clint'd ever felt. Beyond imagining. 

He fell backwards into the drift of dead leaves, writhing against the agony that was rolling through him. He couldn't see through it, wasn't sure he could breathe, every movement burning like ice-white fire but the pain too all-encompassing to imagine staying still. He only barely registered someone yanking off the mask he wore, pulling off his bow and cutting away his quiver. He made a noise of protest, of furious denial, and Konrad's huge hand pressed against his chest, held him without effort to the ground. 

"You'll thank me later, kid." 

"Fuck you," Clint spat, he screamed, "fuck all of you," and in the distance, racing closer, sirens screamed back. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next update will take longer - the whole story's written, but there's still some editing to be done. I should show more self-restraint and leave more time before chapter two, but I've been poorly for days and I want kudos. :D

" - but the trailer technically belonged to the circus." 

Clint choked out a laugh that was too close to a sob to be anything like comfortable. He rested his head back against the pillow, stared up at the ceiling, tried to pretend - just like Mr. Carson was pretending - that there weren't lines of warm saltwater ready to short out his hearing aids, if he wasn’t careful. He couldn’t move his arms to wipe them away. 

Mr. Carson cleared his throat, shuffled his feet, looked over Clint and out the window. 

"You're welcome to come join us," he said, "when you're -" he waved a hand, like that covered all the possibilities: better. Mobile. Able to move your damned arms. Clint hadn't even been told if he would be able to use a bow again, yet, and if he spent any time thinking about that he'd end up panicking the nurses again, hunched over and sucking uselessly at air. 

"What'm I supposed to do until then?" he asked, and the other man pulled an envelope out of his pocket, held it out awkwardly for a moment before putting it safely in Clint's bedside drawer. 

"Your back pay. Yours and Barney's. Since he's - "

The unspoken words in this conversation'd go a long way to filling a book. One of the shitty ones that Clint never liked, the ones with an unhappy ending. 

"Fuck. Okay," Clint said, breathed it out again in case that'd make it true. "Okay." He couldn't force himself to say thank you. Not for this. 

"Barney wanted everything sold," Mr. Carson said, after a moment of awful silence, broken only by the repetitive beeping from two beds along. It’d kept Clint up all night, ‘cos his aids never got the balance right with background noise and there was no one here he trusted to take them out. Eventually the battery was gonna die, sooner rather than later, and he wasn’t sure what the hell he was going to do. 

Mr. Carson cleared his throat, and Clint focused back on him, on the sympathetic expression that was no use to him at all. 

"He said Dirk would take care of selling it all, but Esmeralda said she knew what was yours. She'll bring it to you."

Clint nodded, and Mr. Carson nodded back, and cleared his throat again. 

"I'm sorry about your brother," he said. 

"Yeah," said Clint hollowly. "Ain't we all." 

Clint had been in the hospital for a week, now. The word was that Barney was gonna be in prison long after he got out. Mark'd sat by his bedside and told him everything that was happening, wide-eyed and a little too loud; there were rumours Barney'd killed a guy. There were rumours Trickshot'd killed two. There were rumours that Clint was behind the whole thing, which made him choke on a laugh that curled him around it, that sent liquid fire from his shoulders down every last nerve. A week in, though, after question after question from blank-faced police officers, after denial after denial after miserable lie, it seemed like maybe he was gonna get out of this. He'd been shot, after all. He'd been unarmed. 

Clint hoped Konrad had gotten away in time. At least no one seemed to be talking about him. 

Clint missed the circus more than he ever would’ve expected, in so short a time. The hospital couldn't be further from the circus, but there were tiny jarring similarities. It never got dark there. There was always noise. There were occasional flurries of energy and motion where amazing things happened and no one watching seemed to understand quite how. Clint felt homesick and regular sick and this weird kind of aching sickness that was maybe how helium balloons felt when careless kids let them go. 

Mostly he was tired a lot. They'd started him out on a lot of drugs, but those were getting fewer and further between. The pain from his shoulders throbbed like a heart monitor - which was kinda ironic, since Clint wasn't so sure he had anything left in the hollow place inside his chest - and all the little indignities tied up all together made him feel like he didn't have control of his body any more. 

Maybe the strangest thing was how he was holding it together okay, although it wasn't like he needed practice at putting on a show. He grinned and charmed the nurses, he made jokes about vampires when they came for his blood, he told stories about the circus to anyone who'd listen and promised them future trick shots with a wink and a smile. 

And then he saw Madame Es, hobbling slowly along the corridor in her emerald-green velvet, looking about as alien as he felt, right then; Clint started sobbing and for the longest time he couldn't fucking stop. 

She was holding his hand between both of hers, when he finally managed to drag in a vaguely normal breath. Her knuckles were lumpy with arthritis now and her skin felt like endlessly re-used paper bags, soft and crumpled and in danger of tearing with the faintest pressure. The gently soothing words falling from her lips were incredibly familiar and still meaningless to him; he'd asked her once what she called him and she informed him tartly that he'd be better not to know. 

"Oh, my hawk," she finally sighed, patting his hand, then reaching up to cup his cheek and wipe at stray tears with her thumb. "Why couldn't you leave your asshole brother to die in the ditch he deserves?" 

Clint snorted messily, snotty and tear-stained, and shook his head. "Family's gotta stick together," he said, one of the mantras that'd woven through his childhood like bindweed. 

"Family is too important to be decided by blood," she snapped back. 

"Yes, bunică," Clint answered, chastened, and she grabbed his nose between two crooked fingers and twisted it to the edge of pain. 

"Don't you try to get around me," she said, stern enough that it had taken him years of knowing her to recognise the laughter under the surface. "Now." 

She had been followed in by two hospital porters carrying duffle bags, which seemed about right to carry everything Clint owned in the world. The smaller sports bag she'd kept to herself, even though - from the hang of it - it looked heavy. She heaved it, now, up onto the sheets of Clint's bed, where it landed with a papery thump. 

"Your brother," she said, "such a bad habit for dirty magazines. Yours I liked better, all the pretty boys kissing, very nice." Clint jerked a hand convulsively, wanting to cover his eyes, and settled into colourful swearing when he moved his damned shoulder wrong. "I found this behind all of his collection," she said, "and I thought perhaps you would like it to be yours." 

Clint leaned forward warily as she slowly unzipped it, peeled open the bag to reveal rolls and rolls and fuckin' rolls of crumpled hundred dollar bills. 

*

First thing Clint did after leaving the hospital?

Well, first thing after setting fire to the goddamned slings they’d kept him in, and then shamefacedly handing over the money for ‘em to the tiny angry nurse who followed him out.

First thing, right after that, Clint opened a goddamn bank account. Hell, he opened a bunch. Because Clint, unlike his big brother Charles Bernard Barton Jr., didn’t listen to the paranoid asshole rantings of his dad. He didn’t deposit it all right away, that’d be almost as dumb as keeping it under a mattress in a trailer with a cheap-ass lock on the door. Instead he deposited a couple hundred in each account every day, used some of the rest of it to pay for cheap motel rooms. To pay his hospital bill. To pay for the physical therapy they figured he needed if he was ever gonna shoot again. 

It was - it was good to have goals. Having goals was almost like a moment of solidity in the mire of depression that was threatening to swallow him up. 

For a little while Clint even considered getting a job, anything to stop staring at the off-white walls of the motel room he was barely living out of. Thing was, he had no kinda resume and he could still barely lift his arms, which he figured was gonna rule out all of the things you could do when your job history consisted of marksmanship and shovelling literal shit. 

And then physical therapy started. And everything outside of it just - stopped. 

It was nothing: pulling, pushing, lifting some. It was everything: fighting, shaking, crying a little. He walked out of that clean, white room like a zombie, fell asleep on the bus across town, collapsed backwards across his bed and stared at the ceiling until the waves of pain that tasted like exhaustion eased off just enough for him to nap before he woke to do it again. 

He figured he probably ate sometimes, but he couldn't so much remember doing it. He wore through the soles of his sneakers with his daily routine of visiting banks. He recharged his hearing aids in case anyone said anything worth listening to, and then - without saying a word - he trudged to the gym and nodded hello to the lady at the reception desk, the girl who used to ride horses, the guy with the gunshot wound and the gently receding hair. He sweated and sobbed and swore all over his therapist, and then he apologised sincerely, thanked her, promised himself never to come back. 

He always came back.

But then, so did the world, eventually. It was a gradual thing, detail shading in slow, like when he used to run Doom on the ancient machine Barney’d had for a while. Clint started to notice the weather in the morning, even though he didn't really have enough clothes for it to change much about his day. He moved the hospital paperwork off the bedding so he could maybe sleep without it digging into his back. On his way across town to the clinic, one day, his attention got fish-hook caught by a clump of purple flowers just about peeping through the winter, promising that some day there'd be spring. 

That struck him. That knocked him backwards, a little like a punch to the gut. Barney'd most likely had a trial, by now. The courts had most likely decided his fate, and Clint had just skipped out on the lot of it. 

Some kinda brother he was. 

He thought about going to the circus to find out the latest about what'd happened to him, only by the time he got around to turning thought into action there was nothing left to show they'd been there but weeks-wide circles of yellowing grass. 

It was the first time he could remember really being alone. 

The next morning, Clint showed up at the clinic a full hour before his therapist. He had to wait outside, warming his hands with clouds of breath, until the lady from reception arrived at work and opened the door. He shrugged off his coat - 'cos he could do that now, which was the kind of incremental progress that made him mad that he couldn't punch something - and he started in with the stretches, same way his therapist made him every day. Five, maybe ten minutes in, the lights flickered and buzzed on above his head, blinking into life like he was, slow and reluctant. He turned to see the guy with the gunshot, limping over to the benches and leaning heavily on his cane. Clint gave him a brief flicker of a smile for a greeting, and the guy stopped and lifted his hand a little. 

"You know," he said, his voice mid-range and gentler than Clint would've thought. "Every day I bet myself that you're not going to show up, that this time you'll have finally reached your limit, and every day you're right here." 

Clint thought about being offended. It seemed like a lot of work. 

"Yeah?" he said, and no more than that. He turned back to the weights he was gonna start lifting any moment, honest, and did his best to ignore him. 

"I suppose I should thank you," the man continued. "You're doing wonders for my quest to give up taking sugar in my coffee." 

"That's what you bet yourself?" Clint hadn't meant to turn around again, hadn't meant to engage, but a lot of shit seemed to happen that he never quite planned. 

"That's what I bet myself," the man agreed, and he smiled a small and rueful smile that seemed to carry a lot more weight to it than could be measured out in coffee spoons. "Thank you," he said, "for coming back." 

Clint wasn't sure if the weights were a little lighter that day. Wasn't sure if his therapist was going a little easier on him or if it just felt that way. He wondered if maybe - impossibly, at last - he could be starting to get a little better. He stopped by gunshot guy's station on his way out of the gym, watched him swipe the sweat away from his face before he spoke. 

"Get used to doing without sugar," he said, and grinned a little in place of sticking out his hand. "Sorry not sorry." 

"I suppose it's for a good cause," the guy said, rueful smile back in place. "Nice to meet you - ?"

"Clint," he said, and felt for the first time in a while like that was okay. 

"Nice to meet you Clint," the guy said. "I'm Phil." 

The next morning Clint was outside again, and this time he'd brought a hot chocolate for the lady from reception. Turned out her name was Jean, and she was always a little late 'cos she wasn't used to taking the bus, only her car kept making sad choking noises and refusing to start. 

"You should maybe look at the spark plugs," Clint said, and shrugged slightly when she looked at him, and it barely hurt at all. "I'm no kind of mechanical genius, but I managed to fix the clown car a time or two -" 

"...Clown car," she said dubiously, holding the door open so he could duck inside. 

By the time Phil arrived the lights were already on overhead, bright and warm as Jean's laughter. Clint was halfway through a story about the time one of the elephants escaped but he spared a glance and a grin that spread a little wider when Phil saluted him with the cup of takeout coffee he held. 

It kinda felt like Clint had made a friend. 

*

A couple of weeks later and Clint was sitting outside a little coffee shop, shredding a paper napkin while he waited for Phil to bring their order. They'd stood in the queue together, and Clint hadn't been able to help snorting when Phil made a face and ordered himself a flat white, no sort of syrups or sweetners at all.

"You know I'm pretty committed, by now," he said. "You can have a goddamn sugar in your coffee." 

"No," Phil said, surprisingly serious. "We have a bargain." And Clint laughed it off easily, but there was something warm settling into his belly that he kinda wanted to curl up around. 

"You know, I feel like kind of an asshole," he said, as Phil limped over with their coffees on a tray. "Leaving the guy with the bum leg to do the carrying." 

"Better than the guy with the malfunctioning arms," Phil said easily, setting Clint's confection of coffee and syrup and whipped cream down in front of him. Clint wasn't sure when to tell him that he usually took his coffee bitter and black; he was gonna wait for the right moment. 

"So how did you get shot, anyway?" he asked, and Phil smiled his enigmatic little smile. 

"I'd tell you," he said, "but then I'd have to -" 

"Kill me?" Clint asked, grinning, and Phil smiled blandly back. 

"Oh, probably," he said. 

"It's harder than it looks." Clint pulled the lid off his coffee, his mood abruptly soured. 

"I don't doubt it," Phil said, studying him with sharp blue eyes. "You don't have the musculature of a man who'd go down easily." 

Clint frowned and cocked his head, suddenly unsure if this - grabbing coffee together - was as simple as it seemed. Phil caught his look and smiled, seeming to read his mind.

"You'll forgive me," he said, "but I do prefer women." 

"Thank fuck," Clint said frankly, and Phil contrived to look a little offended, his eyes sparkling at Clint's flailing attempts to salvage what he'd said. "No, I didn't - it's not you, it's - I've just been through kind of - oh, fuck you," he said finally, helpless, when Phil gave in and started laughing. 

"Maybe you got shot 'cos you're an asshole," Clint said finally, and Phil let out a last graceless snort. 

"That," he said, taking a sip of his coffee and grimacing, "is undoubtedly true." 

"So I'm thinking... daring bank heist," Clint said, and Phil rolled his eyes. 

"Do I look like the kind of man that could -" 

"You look like," Clint said, cutting him off with extreme prejudice, 'cos he wasn't happy, after everything, with even the hint of a lie, "someone who's got a hell of a lot of secrets hidden under a tailored suit and the world’s most boring tie." 

"I refuse to be lectured on fashion by a man in purple sweatpants," Phil said, and Clint flicked a piece of balled-up napkin precisely to hit the end of his nose. 

"Good aim," Phil said, looking startled, and Clint snorted out a laugh. 

"Bro," he said, "you have no idea." 

"So tell me -" 

"Maybe you got shot in a gun duel over a lady's honor," Clint interrupted, not ready to talk about anything down that road just yet. It was a yawning pit waiting for him, and he hadn't quite defined the edges; he mostly just tried not to look at it. 

"All the ladies of my acquaintance would likely punch me if I tried." 

Clint shifted in his seat, took a sip of his coffee and would swear he could feel the tingle of a sugar rush from even that barest taste. Phil was watching him intently, and he was maybe the first person Clint had ever met who was completely unreadable, not a flicker of emotion on his face that he didn't choose to put there. 

"You're Secret Service, then," he said. "Got shot protecting the president." 

"You overestimate my commitment to the Republicans," Phil said blandly, and Clint grinned helplessly at him. 

"No, okay, that's fair. Maybe you're a secret agent, then. Work for one of those agencies with all the letters, got shot by a supervillain with really unimaginative taste in weapons." 

"Maybe you should stop fishing," Phil said, raising an eyebrow. When Clint just beamed at him, unrepentant, he rolled his eyes. "If you must know," he said tartly, "I was attempting to get some lunch and I was shot in a grocery store in Queens by a bad-tempered gentleman trying to hold up the place." 

"I thought your job was in Manhattan," Clint said, cocking his head. "What were you doing in Queens on your lunch break?" 

"Ah," said Phil, and turned an interesting shade of pink that Clint was secretly delighted by. "I was - that is -" he took a sip of his coffee, clearly avoiding answering. 

"Knew it," Clint said wisely. "Lunchtime Lothario." 

Phil choked on his unsweetened flat white. 

Clint'd enjoy it more if he hadn't corner-caught a glimpse of something on the other side of the street. He didn't know exactly what it was that he saw, but he knew that his gut was telling him it was wrong, and Barney always told him he didn't have enough brains to ignore the things that came from his gut. 

"I'll um," he said, shoving his chair back across the sidewalk with a grating screech, "I'll be right -" 

He was jogging across the road before he'd even finished speaking, just barely sparing a glance for the traffic and lifting an indifferent hand to acknowledge the blaring horns. He ducked into the alleyway after the bundle of guys, the ones who'd kinda been surrounding the guy in the swanky coat. 

"Hey," he called, jogging towards them, watching with narrowed eyes as they closed ranks. "Hey, how about you let my buddy there go?" 

One of them, the biggest, folded his arms across his chest. 

"You are mistaken, bro," he said, and Clint grinned, wide and dumb. 

"Nah, that's my buddy Mervin, we're supposed to meet up for tennis. Hey, Mervin!" he called, over the guy's shoulder, and the swanky guy waved, tremulous and confused. 

"Then maybe you meet Mervin after we finish our business, yes?" 

Clint made an aborted motion towards his shoulder, wincing with the movement, and then sighed and clenched his fists. 

"Y'know, this is so much easier when I've got a bow an’ arrow." 

The big guy snorted. "Bow and arrow?" 

"Sure," Clint said, and grinned a little sharper. "I'm a regular Robin Hood." 

The Russian surged forward and Clint braced himself to take the hit before the man stopped, abrupt and awkward, as there was a click from just behind Clint's ear. 

"If you wouldn't mind returning Dr. Thomas to the street?" a voice said, quiet and calm and just as polite as when he was ordering a flat white, and it was really goddamn weird how natural Phil looked with a gun in his hand. 

"You had that the whole time?" he asked, and Phil smiled slightly. 

"I find it's generally wise." 

"So how come you let me wade in?"

"I was watching you," Phil said, and Clint squinted at him sidelong. 

"Watching me what?"

"Confirm my expectations." 

The Russian and his gang stood sullenly by, the way their hands rested hinting at weapons they weren’t willing to pull, as the other guy ducked past them, cowering a little away from Clint and Phil too. He started running as soon as he hit the street, and Clint tensed to go after him but halted at the quick brush of Phil's hand. 

"He is protected," Phil said, implacable, and the Russian sneered at him. 

"You cannot be everywhere, bro," he said, and shoved past Clint and out onto the street, his men shuffling along behind him. 

"You'd be surprised," Phil said, and somehow vanished his gun. Clint stared at him, confused, off-balance, really wishing he'd found the time to finish drinking his coffee before the guy he'd thought he was friends with had turned right back into a stranger. 

"So," Clint said, "secret agent guy?" 

"Clint," Phil said, a hint of apology in his tone, "I'd like to offer you a job." 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter would have been at least 40% worse without the incredible beta work of flawedamythyst. She is amazing, y'all.

Clint was breathing hard and fast through his mouth, trying to stay as quiet as he possibly could, his body pressed flat to the metal floor. Dark walls rose to a distant ceiling, the lighting indirect and diffuse, and there were enough crates and raised platforms and blind corners to make hiding either easy as hell or an impossibility, he hadn't quite figured out which. The footsteps had faded a while ago but that was a trick, there was no way that was anything but a trick, and Clint could feel time slipping away but there was no way he felt safe enough to move - 

Something grabbed the back of his neck and he yelped, squirming fruitlessly against the weight. 

"Aaw," a low voice said, amused, "who let the puppy in here?" 

"Fuck you, Rumlow." Clint bucked and then wriggled forward, making decent progress until Rumlow's hand hooked into the strap of his quiver and yanked him back to a stop. 

"Not a chance, kid. Are you even legal?" 

"He's seventeen." Phil's voice was low and even and Clint hunched his shoulders against the weight of disappointment - this was easily the fifth time Phil had caught him out of bounds. 

Their relationship had changed, just as soon as Phil had got him to sign a contract here. Now instead of something that felt like friendship Clint was back to feeling like he was being molded again, like Duquesne had, and Trickshot. He - he wanted to believe that Phil had his best interests at heart, but this wasn’t the first time he’d been looked after because of what he could _do_. It was fine. It made the relationship fit into a hollow place he knew the shape of, anyway, somewhere deep inside his chest. 

"He’s _seventeen_?" Rumlow's hand disappeared, and Clint rolled over and pushed up to his feet. He considered for a second. 

"Wait," he said, "I am?" Barney'd been lying to everyone so long that Clint had kinda lost track. 

"What you are," Phil said, his footsteps silent as he climbed the stairs to join them, "is late for the gun range, which you'll remember -"

"Goddamn guns," Clint muttered, not quite under his breath - 

" - was one of the conditions of your finding employment with us -" 

"- won't even let me touch my goddamned bow -" 

"- whereas strangely, you getting involved in training scenarios was definitely not part of our agreement." 

"How the hell long am I expected to be useless?" Clint burst out, flinging out his hands and working hard to hide the resulting wince. 

Rumlow cocked his head to one side, considering, and then his hand darted out and his thumb pressed unerringly into Clint's still healing left shoulder, hard enough to make him flinch backwards. 

"I'm gonna say until you get better," Rumlow said, a strange little smile on his face. 

Clint had met Rumlow on his second day at SHIELD. 

The first day had been a welter of paperwork, a lot of sitting in gray, square rooms, a lot of watching Phil having hissing arguments with people in dark gray uniforms who gave Clint sidelong glances while he failed to read their lips. 

By the time it had got around to lunchtime any initial enthusiasm Clint had felt had faded, and he'd sat in the canteen opposite Phil, poking unenthusiastically at some dried-out lasagna. 

"Gotta say, I kinda expected the secret agent life to be a little more interesting." 

Phil looked weird in amongst all the gray-clad agents. Unremarkable. Small and kinda unassuming, which was a hell of a strange thing to think about someone who'd tossed kettle bells back and forth between his hands like they were nothing. Clint was actually a little impressed at how thoroughly he disappeared into the persona; it was like what Clint did in the ring, only in reverse. 

Phil had smiled at him, a little mischief in his eyes. "Perhaps," he said, "I should show you the range." 

Clint was used to paper targets tacked to fenceposts. Bottles half-filled with water and strung from trees. Sandbags, if he was experimenting with creating his own arrows, 'cos Carson wasn't so big on things catching on fire. 

SHIELD did a little better than that. 

The room was the size of an aircraft hangar, divided into different colored zones for target shooting, long-distance, some kinda amazing obstacle course that Clint had itched to get at with his bow. He had watched, open-mouthed, as a dark-haired woman hurdled a crate, ran across a rope bridge, slid under a lowering barrier and shot three targets dead centre. 

"Impressive, huh?" Phil had asked, and Clint folded his arms, tried to look a little bored.

"I'd have shot all four with my bow," he said. 

"When you've finished your physical therapy," Phil had told him, "I'd be happy to see you prove that," and the lack of doubt in his voice was like a little balm to Clint's soul. 

He'd spent most of the rest of his first afternoon in the aforementioned physical therapy, and emerged sore and aching and frustrated and stupidly, draggingly tired. He couldn't help but return to the range, though, before he signed out and stumbled back to the motel. Couldn't resist the urge to start studying timings, angles, routes. 

It was late in the day, enough that the bright white lights collected in pools on the floor, leaving the edges of the room in shadow. He settled himself on top of a crate and watched a rangy, dark-haired guy shooting and reloading and shooting again, something almost meditative about it, the barest incremental shifting of aim and stance. Clint had been starting to feel like he could fall asleep there, and he'd almost jumped out of his skin when another guy emerged from the armory, flicked his long hair back out of his face, and stared at the obstacle course with narrowed eyes. 

Both the agents Clint'd watched run the course earlier in the day had scrabbled over the cargo netting to begin; the long pool that ran alongside it was too deep to wade through and there was no speedy way to swim across it with a gun. It was a little undignified, a little slow, but he'd figured it was the only way that made sense; it wasn't like anyone would land a jump of that distance. 

This guy apparently disagreed. He backed away a few steps, squared himself, and ran forward, hurling himself across the pool. He planted one foot on the wall to push himself forward, and landed on the far side without even seeming to break his stride. 

He moved like an avalanche. Clint couldn't look away. 

The man tore through the assault course. He didn't do it with grace, or elegance - it was sheer power, complete disregard for his personal wellbeing, and it was like watching a man try to outrun his own personal demons. Like a man punishing himself. Honestly, it was a little terrifying to watch, and yet somehow Clint had never seen anything more beautiful. 

He almost swallowed his tongue when the guy slid under the descending barrier with millimeters to spare, shooting with both hands as he slid and taking out all four targets in less than a second. Clint shifted awkwardly, glad he'd picked a poorly-lit corner to watch from, 'cos he would swear he'd never been so hard in his life. 

"Soldat," someone snapped from the shadowed doorway, and the man's shoulders squared again, the tension that had slightly eased through pushing himself so hard snapping right back into place. He answered, something low and unintelligible and thick in his mouth, Eastern European, maybe. And then he turned and holstered his guns and said, barely quieter, "Asshole." 

It was so incongruous that Clint snorted on a soft laugh, and shadowed eyes snapped over to meet his. 

"Oh shit," he breathed, and barely lifted a hand. "Hey." 

"The hell are you doing in here, kid?" 

It was the other guy, the one Clint had completely forgotten about, unloading an empty clip and apparently done with his evening's meditation. 

"I - er," he said, scrabbling upright. 

"Go on, get outta here," the guy had said, implacable but not mean, and Clint had made a run for it. 

The next day, the guy who'd chased him out had been introduced to him as Agent Rumlow. He'd taken him to be fitted for a uniform, teased him about his chicken legs, and folded his arms across his chest when Clint asked who the hell that man _was_ , last night. 

"I'd tell you," he'd said, "but then I'd have to kill you," with the air of someone who'd been waiting literal years to use that damned line. 

They'd got on all right since then, Clint supposed, but there was something about Rumlow that still put him a little on edge. 

His hand went to his shoulder where Rumlow had dug his thumb in, and he scowled at Phil.

"Yeah," he said, "Fine. Guns. Like I can’t kick the ass of anyone in the building, whatever weapon you choose." 

He ignored Rumlow’s snort.

"And then report to my office," Phil said, unruffled. "We'll see what use we can make of you." 

It was a little crazy, how easy Phil could do that. Make him feel like he had some kinda worth. It made it easier to turn to face Rumlow, square his shoulders and look him in the eye. 

"You kinda remind me of my brother." 

Rumlow twitched a little backwards, his eyebrows raised. "Well that's - sweet?" 

"My brother's a dick," Clint said serenely, and Rumlow barked out a startled laugh. 

"Okay, all right, puppy's got teeth," he said, reaching out to tousle Clint's hair. Clint ducked out from under it, a reluctant grin tugging at his mouth, and shoved past him on his way out the door. 

*

He would've liked it better if the use that Phil had put him to had involved less paperwork. Clint's reading had never exactly been good, 'cos the circus had been more excited about how far and how accurately he shot than they had about any kind of schooling. The first few days of it had him returning to his motel with a headache beating behind his eyes, staring up at the off-white ceiling with the table lamp on 'cos he couldn't bear the overhead light. 

It got easier, though. He made fewer mistakes. SHIELD fixed him up with some state of the art hearing aids that meant he could focus enough to have the odd conversation as he worked, and after a couple weeks of morning paperwork, afternoon physical therapy, and evenings spent hoping fruitlessly on the range, he even went to the library one weekend and picked out a book Agent Hill had been ranting about in the canteen. 

And gradually, _finally_ , his shoulders stopped hurting. He was able to push harder, lift more, stretch further, and it made everything else worth it to know that in weeks, in days, _tomorrow_ he would be allowed on the range with a goddamn bow. They’d got some in especially for him, and from the occasional office gossip Clint’s new aids let him overhear, Phil had got some ribbing for it. It was fine. They’d learn. 

He started out carefully. For all his complaining, Clint wasn't an idiot, and he was too impossibly happy to be able to use a bow again to put that at risk by pushing himself too far. He went with medium distance, simple stance, just firing arrow after arrow until the target was bristling, then collecting them all up and starting again. The calluses on his fingers had softened a little, and he took to keeping a box of band-aids in one of the excessive number of pockets SHIELD put on their pants. 

People watched him at first, probably kinda curious - sure as hell wasn't anyone else practicing with a bow. Over time they seemed to lose interest, though, until he figured he was just another part of the scenery. Nothing special. Nothing Amazing. 

He wasn't sure he liked how that felt. 

Spending so much time in the range, though - long after his daily shift ended, long after the sun disappeared from the sky - meant he caught the occasional glimpse of the man Rumlow had been reluctant to talk about. 

It was never up close. Honestly, that was probably for the best, because Clint couldn't guarantee that he wouldn't melt into an idiot puddle if he ever came face to face with the guy. Even just the way he moved - 

But it wasn't just the way he moved. It was the width of his shoulders, the way his henleys clung to the muscles of his back. It was the sharp gray eyes and the long dark hair that fell into them. It was the way he squared his jaw, determined, before every time he threw himself at the assault course and tore it apart. 

It was the time Clint had walked past one of the gyms on his way out the door one night and caught a glimpse of him whaling on a punching bag, his sleeves rolled up and one of his arms made of beautiful, gleaming metal. 

If Clint ever ran into him in the hallways, there was a distinct possibility that he would die right there. 

*

Phil - Coulson, Clint probably ought to call him Coulson, now he was his boss - had been straight with him; they honestly didn't have much use for him until he hit eighteen. Clint used the range, did Coulson's paperwork far more slowly and inaccurately than Coulson would've managed, worked out in any of the multitude of gyms. Coulson called it an investment, which Clint wished wouldn’t sting; Rumlow, unaware he was overheard, called it pity. 

It ate at him. Made a home for itself in his gut and festered there. The circus - where he'd been, unarguably, the _best_ at something - was starting to feel a hell of a long way away. Clint picked anemically at the studying Coulson'd put in front of him - he kinda suspected the guy was trying to coax him through his GED - and attended all the mandatory training sessions, but the only time he really felt like it was worth paying attention was at the range. 

Clint was sitting in an overheated conference room in the middle of one long afternoon, trying to pay attention to the principles of project management as applied to planning a mission, and honestly struggling not to fall asleep. There had been maybe half an hour of seriously interesting material, but that half an hour had been a long time since, and Clint could feel his head drifting down to his chest. 

He startled awake as a paperclip bounced off his nose and skittered across the table, and he sat upright just in time to look attentive when the agent at the front of the room looked around. Clint scanned around the table, confused, and met the calculating brown eyes of a woman with red hair and an effortlessly studious expression. She considered him for a second or two, then gave him the briefest flickering wink. 

Clint reached out to palm the paperclip, pretended to be paying attention or a minute or two, and then flicked it into her ear. 

When they were asked to pair up in order to plan a route into a guarded building, after the paperclip had made its way into Clint's hair, the woman's nostril, Clint's goddamned _mouth_ , he stayed seated and kept his head down. Team work hadn't exactly worked out well for him in the past. He occupied himself with unbending the paperclip into a tiny silvery javelin, and then flung it at the sign on the door and nailed it dead centre in an 'o'. 

The chair next to his screeched as it was dragged out, the noise doing horrible things to the inside of Clint's head. He looked up and it was the redhead, making herself at home in his personal space - it'd kind of involuntarily expanded during his time at SHIELD, 'cos no one had been within three feet of him for months. 

"Hey," he said, tentative, and she looked at him thoughtfully. 

"Third floor window." She tapped the diagram for their assignment impatiently, and he figured he must've looked a little confused. That was pretty much just his face. "The fire escape -" 

"Too loud," he interrupted, and made a face at her frown. "No way you can pull it down from the first floor without it screeching or clanking, no matter how well you grease it."

"But if we incapacitated the guards -" 

"Why bother?" Clint squinted at the diagram, and then poked at a flagpole by a window on the fifth floor. "I've got this arrow, shoots a grappling line -" 

"But if you missed?" 

Clint scoffed. 

"I never miss," he said, and she raised an eyebrow, curious. 

"This," she said thoughtfully, "I would like to see." 

The post-mortem was almost as good as working through the activity with the redhead, Natasha. She took neat, careful notes, turning her pad just enough that he could make out the scathing commentary she was making about the plans of other teams. Getting yelled at for snorting over one particularly poorly thought-out plan was worth it for the smile that he could just about see. 

"You maybe want to come to the range?" He asked diffidently, just as soon as the session was over. For the first time she looked just the slightest bit uncertain, tucking her hair behind her ear.

"I think I'd like to see you shoot," she decided, and Clint grinned and told her all about The Amazing Hawkeye on their way down. 

It was interesting, watching people's reactions to Natasha. She was small, and graceful, and she moved like a dancer, and one tank of a guy crashed into a trashcan 'cos he was focused so hard on avoiding her. Clint had always - outside of the range - been invisible here before, and being at the edge of a circle of faintly terrified attention was actually kind of fun. 

She trailed him over to the armory. After a moment's thought he decided on the recurve, and spent a couple minutes stretching out his shoulders before leading her over to the archery targets they'd let him set up. 

"So what d'you want to see?" he asked, a little excited after so many evenings of repetitive muscle-building practice to get the chance to show off, bouncing on the balls of his feet. She watched him, and her expression didn't change, but he was hoping that the faint air of amusement he could sense wasn't just wishful thinking. 

"Of course a bullseye would be too simple a request," she said, and he shrugged and fired an arrow side-on without bothering to turn and look. 

"Kinda," he said, and ignored the impressed commentary from behind him, 'cos the very slight widening of her eyes somehow felt like it meant a bit more. 

"Another beside it," she said, and Clint fired one so close that a fletch fluttered off and fell to the floor. Her smile felt like a cheering crowd.

"Wanna see me do two at once?" 

He didn't really notice the growing crowd until they started calling out requests, and he couldn't help how his smile widened at the startled gasps, the smattering of applause. He felt more himself than he'd felt since that night on the leaves, when everything good had drained out of the twin holes in his shoulders and left him cold and alone. 

The sudden quiet was startling, and Clint looked up to see that Natasha was staring at the doorway, something about her suddenly sharper and more alert. 

He turned, curious, and saw the man he'd been watching standing in the shadows there, his jaw clenched and his hands flexing. It ought to have been intimidating - judging by the dispersal of the crowd, that was the generally accepted response. To Clint, though, it looked a little more like he was steeling himself to come in, like a mastiff approaching a cat that'd batted its nose a few too many times. 

"Who's that guy?" he asked, and she answered without breaking eye contact. 

"The Winter Soldier," she said, and then turned, startled, at his snort of laughter. 

"I'm sorry," he said, "I just - did he give himself that name?" 

"Problem, _Hawkeye_?" she asked, and he scowled, mock-offended.

"Hey, I worked hard for that name, and I didn't sound like a character from a kid's book, either." 

"No," she said thoughtfully. "You sound like a football team, perhaps." 

He shrugged. "Y'know, I can live with that." Figuring the entertainment was done, for the moment, he walked over to the target to retrieve his arrows and grab the loose fletch. Natasha followed him over and perched on the low wall that marked the end of this part of the range. 

"He was an assassin," she said, once he'd quit paying her any outward attention, which was an interesting character quirk that he was gonna learn how to use. "He shot me."

"He _shot_ you?" Clint repeated incredulously, staring at her, and she shrugged indifferently. 

"More accurately, he shot through me," she said. "And then I shot him back." 

"Is - that some kinda SHIELD hazing ritual?" Clint shoved the arrows back into his quiver except for the one with the missing fletch. "'Cos I'm not sure I'm into that." 

"He was on our list of most wanted," she said, "and I am very good at my job." 

Clint thought about this as they walked back to the armory and, as he thought, his eyes strayed back to the Soldier. 

"Does he have a name?"

"Most people are satisfied with the name of the legend," she said, and Clint shrugged, watching the Soldier throw himself at the assault course like he didn't mind if he shattered against it. 

"I'm not most people," he said. He wasn’t sure he wanted to work somewhere that had nameless soldiers instead of people. He wasn’t sure that could lead to anywhere good.

"James," she told him, after a moment's thoughtful silence. "His name is James. But he will not come close enough for you to use it." 

Clint handed the SHIELD agent on armory duty back his bow and the quiver full of arrows, keeping the one that he needed to repair and spinning it between his fingers as he thought. 

"So he was a bad guy?" he asked finally, and that was the first time he heard her laugh. 

"You are too old to believe there are distinctions like that," she said, and he snorted. 

"Tell that to any of the goddamn agents here, they all seem to think I'm too young." 

"They are mistaken," she said, "or naive," and he had thought she was around the same age as him, but that look made her look like her history had been packed full, layered experience folded tight. "The Soldier is a legend and a myth," she said eventually. "And I'm not sure that he was entirely James." 

Clint squinted at the side of her face, trying to puzzle that out. 

"Okay, fuck this," he said eventually, because these layers weren’t comfortable to think through. "You talk in riddles and I didn't even graduate junior high. Wanna go grab some pizza?" 

She regarded him gravely for a moment, and then flashed him a quick and mischievous smile that rounded her age down again. 

"Sal's," she said, decisive, and he willingly followed where she led. 

If she noticed him spare a glance back at the restless figure behind them, she was kind enough not to mention it.

*

Somehow having a proper friend - Clint had referred to them as that once, and Natasha hadn't killed him, and he figured that counted - made SHIELD about a million times better. He hadn’t worked out what she wanted from him yet, and he thought that might be what friendship was supposed to be. 

She didn't come to most of the training sessions, as she'd been an agent for a while and had mostly showed up because she’d been curious about the idiot who chose to train with a bow. (Not exactly her words. Clint'd extrapolated.) He met her most days for lunch, though, and occasionally she joined him on the range. She'd also decided that she would teach him to fight, which he'd figured he'd be alright at, until he'd started. 

He limped into the range after their first session, looked at the armory longingly for a moment, and then groaned pathetically and collapsed onto one of the heaps of sandbags that delineated the assault course. He hadn't actually realised how many muscles his body held until every damned one of them hurt. 

"Ow," he told the ceiling. 

"You need to move," the ceiling said back. 

"Yep," he said agreeably. "Absolutely. Any second now. Once my limbs grow back." And then he tilted his head enough that he could see who was talking, and flinched back so violently that he fell off the sandbags and sprawled out on the floor. "Aw floor," he said pathetically, "no." 

It didn't open up and swallow him, no matter the silent pleading, so Clint sighed and rolled over, propping himself up on his elbows. 

"Sorry," he said. "I swear that wasn't a comment about the arm." 

James - the Soldier - shrugged. He was dressed as usual in combats and a red henley, and his metal hand twitched like he was considering shoving it in his pocket. 

"You should move," he said again, and then his mouth twitched into something that wasn't nearly friendly enough to be a smile. "You usually watch from over there." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, then headed off to the armory. Clint hauled himself off the floor and considered walking out before admitting defeat and shuffling, shoulders hunched, to sit in his usual spot.

"I mean we _could_ allow Clint to maintain some small amount of dignity, sure," he groused, "but where's the fun in that?" 

Purely out of spite he didn't stop at the top of the pile of crates. Instead he looked around, calculating, and then crouched down and launched himself at a decorative bit of cargo netting. That held his weight just about long enough for him to swarm to the ropes holding it up, and then he was climbing, fast and sure, until he'd almost reached one of the huge steel beams that crossed the room. 

It hurt like hell after the workout he’d had, but Duquesne had put him through a hundred times worse. Something small and spiteful inside him was sick of being called young, of being viewed as a kid with a trick; more than that he wanted to prove himself to _James_ , specifically, and that was worth pushing past the pain. 

Besides, when he was hurting he wasn’t thinking about the job he was letting himself in for. The targets they were training him to hit; the people they were training him to fight. 

James squinted up at him. "The hell are you doing?" 

"Getting a better view," Clint called back, anchoring himself by hooking his legs around the rope, gripping on hard with his thighs, and then reaching over so he could grab the beam and pull himself towards it. He was breathing hard when he pulled himself onto the metal, straddling it and making himself as comfortable as possible with how much everything hurt, but it was definitely worth the effort for the look on James' face. 

"Circus brat," Clint said smugly.

"Then what the hell are you doing here?" 

Clint deflated, a whole bunch of the joy of climbing evaporating. "Little too heavy on the brat, I guess," he said. 

There was no response to that. He wouldn't have known what to say, himself. So he just watched as James tackled the assault course again, shaving the barest slivers from his time. He had throwing knives, this time, and he still hit every target; not quite centre, but enough to put a little heat in Clint's gut. 

James ran it three times, finishing up just to start right over again, and by the time he was done his breath was heaving and he was dripping with sweat. He grabbed a towel from a backpack stowed unobtrusively in a corner, and wiped at the back of his neck as Clint made his way down, having to focus intently on the goddamn rope because James flicking sweaty hair out of his face, mopping at his chest where the collar of his shirt stretched wide, that kind of thing was bad for his coordination. 

He landed on the pile of crates with a thump that almost dislodged one of them, sending the whole pile teetering, so he threw himself off and when he hit the floor tucked and rolled right back to his feet, graceless enough with his aching muscles that Trick would’ve smacked him for it, spreading his hands like he was waiting for applause. 

"You're an idiot," James told him, and Clint couldn't help his grin even as he turned to go, figuring he'd just about worn out his welcome.

"Hey, Clint." 

He turned, hoping like hell that the stupid winged insects that'd colonised his belly weren't visible on his face. 

"That's you right? Clint." 

"That's me," Clint said. James watched him for a moment or two, inscrutable, before ducking down to replace the towel in his bag.

"You should watch for longer before you strike," he said. "She has tells." 

"Wait," Clint said, "you were watching us train?" 

He shrugged that off, standing and slinging his bag over one shoulder. "They're not easy to spot, but they're there." 

"Why should I trust you?" Clint asked, more than a little confused and - far too late - outraged on her behalf. "You shot her!"

"I shot her," James said, "that's how I know she has tells." 

Clint gaped after him as he disappeared back into the armory, then spun on his heel and headed for the security desk, for the exit door and the long bus ride home. 

He had some stuff to think about. 

"So hypothetically," Clint said the next morning, and Natasha rolled her eyes and theatrically groaned. They were sitting in a McDonalds - Clint's choice for breakfast, since he'd managed to knock her flat on her back when they were training first thing. He hadn't capitalised on it, 'cos he'd been too busy with his overly complex victory dance, and he'd wound up bruised a hell of a lot more than was really necessary... But he'd _knocked her down_ and therefore he got a goddamn McMuffin. 

"Anything that starts that way is already a lie," she said. 

"Okay," he said, and bit his lip. "Okay." This time it was more like a breath, steeling himself. Natasha took a sip of her hot chocolate - the only thing in the place she'd condescend to consume - and watched him with curious eyes. 

It wasn't easy to know where to start. It wasn't easy to start it any place that didn't end up all tangled around itself, _himself_ , awkward and awful and feeling at fault. 

"The last time anyone took the time to teach me anything," he said eventually, "he wound up shooting me through both shoulders and leaving me to die." 

She digested that. Thought it over. Placed her cup carefully on the table. 

"Untrue," she said. "Coulson hasn't shot you yet." 

Clint shrugged, unconsciously braced against the expectation of pain. 

"Probably a matter of time." 

"Are you asking me if I will shoot you, Clint?" She asked, and he pulled tiny pieces of potato off his hash brown, staring down at them intently. 

"Should I forgive you if you do?" 

"Ah," she said, and smiled a secretive smile. "This is about the Soldier." 

"I got close enough," he said. "I didn't call him James, sure, but we had practically a whole conversation, and he didn't seem that bad." 

She looked past him, one of those thousand-yard stares, but Clint could see a lot further than a thousand measly yards and there was no way he was giving this up. 

"He seemed _lonely_ ," he said, insistent. "I just figured -" 

"Would you forgive your mentor, Clint?" she asked, cutting across him and cutting the legs out from under him, leaving him gaping and lost for words. He rubbed a hand across his mouth, giving himself time to think. Would he forgive Trick? Should he?

"Probably," he eventually decided, and she looked exasperated and a little resigned, reaching across to steal the half a hash brown that he hadn't yet destroyed. 

"Durak," she said, and he didn’t know what that meant but he decided her tone of voice made it fond.

When they walked back into the headquarters, Natasha headed off to be all busy and important, and Clint shuffled through the corridors until he hit Coulson's office, almost running into Rumlow who was on his way out. 

"Hey, Fido," Rumlow said, and Clint gave him the finger while he bit down on his grin, letting it out just as soon as he'd gone through Coulson's door. 

"You seem cheerful," he said, mild and unreadable as ever, and Clint grabbed a stack of papers and the laptop Coulson had given him, going over to curl up by the heating vent. 

"I think I'm making friends," he said, enjoying Coulson's gentle smile. 

*

It took him a while to convince Natasha about his plans, but Clint was persistent to the point of insanity and he could tell he was wearing her down. Maybe two weeks later he wandered into the range in the evening, whistling between his teeth, and leaned against the stacked up crates rather than risking the climb. 

James spared him a glance, and maybe Clint'd never yet seen a smile on his face but there was definitely less outright hostility. 

He waited until James'd been through the course twice and then cleared his throat, stopping him just before he started over again. 

"Fancy a bet?" 

James' breathing was a little elevated, his cheeks kinda pink. He looked like Clint imagined someone'd look if they'd just been thoroughly kissed, and Clint had to straighten up and turn a little away, 'cos he was seventeen and his libido had kinda shaped itself around these evenings, any night he could spare the time. 

"What," he said. It wasn't exactly a question, but Clint figured he could interpret it as inviting a response. 

"I figure I can beat you," he said. 

"You can't beat me," James told him, raking his hair back out of his eyes. Clint watched the motion with a dry mouth, and snapped back with the automatic pettiness of someone used to arguing with their big brother. 

"Can too." 

"What will I win?" James asked, and Clint snorted. 

"You won't, but - I dunno. What do you want?" 

James' eyes dropped down and then dragged back up, and Clint felt it like a caress. 

"I want you to stop watching me," he said. 

Clint took a step backwards, feeling absurdly fucking betrayed. Feeling stupid, and young, and a little like if he dared to blink all the idiot was gonna fall out of his eyes. 

"Sorry," he said, muted, and James scowled at the ground. 

"I will train you instead," he said, and Clint's heart leapt out of his stomach and tried to choke him. 

"I don't get how that's losing," he said, and the corner of James' mouth quirked a little. 

"You will," he said. 

"Okay, but when I beat _you_ ," Clint said, suddenly filled with all the bluster that James'd temporarily stolen away, "you've gotta start meeting Natasha and me for lunch." 

James squinted at him. "She will kill me," he said, certainty like stone. 

"Nah," Clint said, dismissive. "That'd make me sad." 

There was a moment when James' eyes snapped to his, when Clint realised exactly what he'd just said and almost exploded for blushing. There was a moment that felt impossible and endless and full of potential, and then James looked away and shrugged his shoulders, couldn't be clearer dismissing it if he tried. 

"Get your damned bow," he said. 

Clint raced into the armory and grabbed his bow and a quiver, plus a couple of the trick arrows he'd devised in his spare time. There was no way he was gonna lose this, and if that involved testing his new putty arrow on a deadly assassin that was a sacrifice he was willing to make. He skittered out again and then stopped, took a breath, adopted a casual sort of walk to make the rest of the way over to the starting line, James watching him with a vaguely amused expression on his face. 

"You sure about this, kid?" James asked, and Clint smirked. 

"Are you?" 

James shrugged, crouching down a little into his habitual starting position, shaking out his shoulders so he was fluid and loose. 

"Three," he said, "two - _fuck_!"

Clint dodged sideways, souvenir of so many sibling fights, and James missed his stumbling snag for the back of his shirt. Clint ignored the cargo netting and instead threw himself up the wooden frame that held it up, racing up the steep incline fast enough that he could grab the top of it before gravity had had a chance to notice he was fucking with it. He flipped himself over the top of the frame and skidded down the other side, landing heavily just as James thudded to a landing beside him. Clint shoved at him and ran, skidding to a halt in front of the barbed-wire tunnels. 

"Fuck this," he said, as James dropped heavily to his knees. He ignored the entrance he was supposed to take and instead hopped up to balance on the wooden poles that held up the wire, taking a second to get his balance and then leaping from one to another. There was a tricky moment, mid-way, when James lashed out and almost kicked one of the poles out from underneath him, but Clint had learned on the freakin' tight-rope and this couldn't ever compare. 

He hit the ground running before James had disentangled himself, getting a decent lead and letting out a Tarzan yodel as he leapt up and grabbed the rope, swinging over the pool of scummy water and flinging himself off the other side. The slope of loose shale he had to run up almost tripped him, but he grabbed an arrow out of his quiver and shoved it into the wooden ramp that held the small stones, hanging on it to keep his balance and then hauling himself up. It cost him precious seconds, though, and he could hear James thundering along behind him as he came to the rope bridge. As soon as your weight hit the bridge it triggered the door to lower on the other side, forcing you to run and skid under before shooting the targets on the other side. Clint whipped out four arrows and fired them off two at a time, hitting all four dead centre from this side of the bridge. Then he ran over the rope bridge, balancing lightly like it was the high wire Duquesne had cut out from under him, and ducked through the door, clapping slowly as James skidded under seconds later. 

"I won," he said. 

"You _cheated_ ," James growled. Clint shrugged. 

"So you train me, _then_ you get lunch with me. Simple," he said.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With love and thanks to Dr G, CB and Amy, all of whom helped me through this. 
> 
> I cannot tell you how much comments and kudos would be appreciated - it has been a hellacious week.

Clint didn't stir as the chair opposite him was dragged noisily across the floor. It was a pretty familiar position to him by now - head resting on his arms resting on the sticky canteen table, every single muscle protesting its existence. 

"What did you do to him?" 

Tasha. She prodded him, and if Clint could've slapped her hand away he would've. Instead he just kinda rocked with the force of her poke. 

Another chair at the table was dragged out, the one right next to Clint, and when James dropped into it his legs splayed out and the bare inch of space between their two knees was filled with torturous warmth. 

He'd been doing that more lately. It was probably due to the amount of time he spent well inside Clint's personal space; it was a hell of a lot easier to cope with the proximity when Clint was learning, though, when Clint was working as hard as he could to avoid any pain. This? This was - 

Clint groaned, faintly. James sounded amused when he replied. 

"Training. The usual." 

"Ah." A pause - that'd be Tasha taking a sip of the coffee that she never got from the canteen, but from sources she refused to share. "I think it might be starting to take." 

"He beat you?" James sounded reluctantly impressed, but was cut off by Tasha's snort. 

"He lasted a little longer," she said. 

Clint had never much been interested in fighting. It had always kind of been Barney’s thing - Clint was nimble and friendly-looking and light-fingered; Barney was there in case he got caught. Thing was, Barney wasn’t around any more, and SHIELD… well, it seemed like it’d do as protection for now. 

Maybe he wouldn’t have chosen this, particularly, maybe he wouldn’t have chosen the violence, but as painful as the process was he was enjoying learning to be good at something. He was enjoying the way neither of them gave anything like praise lightly, because that just meant it had so much more weight to it when they conceded he was doing okay. 

No matter how okay he was doing, though, it still goddamn hurt. 

"You're the worst," Clint told the table top. There was a moment's considering silence. 

"Was that aimed at you or me?" 

"Y'both the worst," Clint said, mulish, pushing himself up so he was sitting at least vaguely upright, slumped back in his chair. "Also, I hate you." 

He'd had to sit up; he knew exactly how long to leave it, by now, exactly how many awkward exchanges they could get through. Natasha wasn't all that much of a talker at the best of times, and James always clammed up when it was more than just the two of them. Every conversation they'd had over the last few weeks had been stilted, wary, but Clint was working on them. Give him a year or two more and he'd swear he could get them to share a grin. 

"So -?" Tasha's eyes were bright with curiosity. 

"So today I learned this awesome leg lock thing with -" Clint flailed around a little, attempting to mime putting pressure on someone's throat, but his arms weren't exactly cooperating just then. 

"I showed you it," James said flatly. "Still working on 'learned'." 

"So where did _you_ learn it?" Tasha asked, and James scowled. 

"Don't remember." 

That was his answer to pretty much any question Tasha came up with about his life before SHIELD brought him in. He always said it in the same tone, flat, disinterested, but his body language said a whole lot more, every bit of it bad. 

"Did you hit your head?" Clint asked, 'cos he had no sense of self preservation, and because he was starting to think that there were areas where James would let him get away with a little more. 

"I don't -" 

"Remember, right. Sorry." 

James scraped at a loose chip of formica with the edge of his thumbnail, intently focused on precisely nothing of any importance. 

"They - they _made_ it so I wouldn't remember," he said quietly, and Tasha went still. She hadn't been moving all that much before but now she was entirely motionless, like in hunting. Clint wasn't sure she knew whether she was predator or prey. 

"They," she prompted, softly, and James' head snapped up, his eyes narrowed. Tasha placed her cup carefully on the table, and Clint reached out to put his hand on James' arm, the metal cool against his skin. James looked at him sidelong, his posture loosening just a little.

"I don't - they didn't want me to -" he scrubbed his hand through his hair like he was trying to yank it out by the roots.

"How the hell," Clint asked, all horrified curiosity, "could someone _make_ you forget?" 

James flinched. 

"Electricity," he said, something awful in the tone of his voice. Something worse in his expression. "Pain." 

Clint only got a second to try and decipher the look on James' face before the guy's chair screeched loudly again as he shoved to his feet, whirling around and heading straight for the door at a pace that was barely a heartbeat away from a run. 

"Shit," Clint said miserably, poking at the plate of unappetising food in front of him as the chatter around him rose back to normal levels. 

"I have never heard him say so much," Tasha said, her voice low with something like shock just audible at the edges of it. 

Clint shrugged one shoulder. "He talks more to me." 

She leaned in, her voice softening.

"You should tell Coulson what he has said." 

Clint looked up, startled by the intent expression on her face. 

"Coulson? Why?" 

"Because he's got a bee in his bonnet about our resident killer." Rumlow dropped into the chair next to Clint's, leaning too close to pick at his cold, limp fries. "He figures there's more to his shitty memory than a guy desperately lying his way out of jail." 

"I must have missed the part where we asked you to sit down," Natasha said, coldly formal. Rumlow slung his arm around Clint's shoulders and bared his teeth across the table at her. If you weren't looking too hard, Clint figured, you could probably mistake it for a grin. 

"Fido always wants me here, right kid?" 

"Sure," Clint said, avoiding Natasha's annoyed look. He wasn't gonna drive away one of the few friends he'd managed to keep this long, not if he could avoid it. "Why not?"

Rumlow always told good stories. He helped himself to the rest of Clint's cold food and had Clint snorting in minutes as he told them about a STRIKE mission. He had a way of relating events like he was telling you secrets, inviting you into a select circle to share in the joke. It wasn't gonna take any kinda shrink to deduce why Clint found himself kinda craving the affectionate teasing, not when Barney had been exactly the same way. When Tasha drank the last of her coffee, though, and got gracefully to her feet, Clint didn't waste a second in mumbling apologies at Rumlow and hurrying to follow her out. 

"I don't like him," she said, abruptly. "I wish you didn't like him." 

Clint shrugged, awkwardly, and didn't say anything, but he stuck close to her heels as she headed for the elevators. As soon as the door closed behind them he came over to lean against the railing beside her, the numbers ticking slowly higher in the silence. 

"Coulson has a theory," she said eventually, into the elevator's empty quiet. "He believes -" 

There was a mirror on the opposite wall to them. Clint watched curiously as Natasha uncomfortably shifted her weight. 

"He believes that James is Bucky Barnes," she said, meeting his eyes in the mirror, a look like defiance on her face. 

"Okay?" Clint said. 

"Bucky Barnes," she said again, like she thought he hadn't heard the first time, and Clint pantomimed an exaggerated shrug, the pit of his stomach full of sick squirming. 

"You don't -" she started, then apparently saw something on his face that he sure as hell hadn't meant to show. "Bucky Barnes," she said carefully, "was Captain America's best pal." 

Okay, Captain America Clint knew. He'd seen a couple of those videos when he'd attended school for a brief period when he was twelve, and a battered copy of a comic Barney'd found him once had been his reading primer. 

"Wasn't he -" Clint started tentatively, "I mean, wouldn't he be older?" 

"Coulson has photos," she said, shrugging one shoulder, her arms folded tight across her chest. "He's pretty persuasive." 

The elevator pinged as they reached Coulson's floor, and Clint followed Tasha out automatically before stopping dead in the middle of the corridor. 

"So Coulson wants to know more about James?" he asked, and Natasha nodded tightly, and Clint felt something inside him curl painfully closed. "Did. Um. Did Phil ask you to make friends with me?" His voice was tentative, feeling its way forward, like someone making their way carefully around the edge of a dark pit. "So you could learn what I found out?" 

"You didn’t even know James when Coulson - when I - " she bit her lip. “Clint -” 

"Yeah," he said, and turned around and walked back to the elevator, a strange sort of numbness making him fumble the buttons. "Okay." 

Her face looked like a mask as the doors slid closed. 

He pressed the button for as high as the elevator would go, and when he got out he climbed higher. A couple of the doors he maybe shouldn't have gone through, but it was amazing the kinds of things a Barton could learn, and a lock that easy to pick was barely even a 'no'. 

Clint found himself, eventually, on one of those rooftops you got on top of office buildings. Loose gravel, and a low wall edging it, and the scattered huts that held air conditioning and lift cables and a whole bunch of pigeon shit. 

It was windy as hell, this high. Clint let it roar around him rather than turning off his aids; the loud nothing of it was pretty good at scouring out the inside of his head. 

*

The only noise was his panting breaths, the heavy thumps, the squeak of his sneakers on the linoleum floor. Somehow he knew, though, that he wasn't alone. Somehow he knew, though, who had bothered to find him. 

"Sometimes I hate it here," he said.

"I think sometimes we all do." 

James lurked at the edge of Clint's field of vision, a shadow just at the corner of his eye. 

"Why don't you leave?" Clint asked, his voice jerking with his awkward punching, his panting breaths cutting his words to pieces. 

"Because they'll kill me." 

There was nothing in James' voice. No fear at the prospect, no anger. Something set in stone like a testament. Something inarguably right. 

Clint pounded on the bag harder, wishing he didn't always check his own momentum, wishing that one of his knuckles would split. His hands hurt - so _fucking_ much - and he needed some kinda acknowledgement of it, some external sign that he could do something about. 

"Fuck them," he snarled, meaning it with the whole of his heart.

"I would rather they kill me," James said, darkly humorous, and Clint snorted inelegantly and shot a glance sideways to see if he could catch him in a smile, dodging clumsily out of the way when the bag swung back.

"Your form is appalling," James told him, and his eyes were dark behind his long hair. 

"That's what Trick always told me," he said, giving up on punching for a second and giving the bag a childish shove. "Could still out-shoot him, nine times out of every ten." 

James sighed and walked closer. The touch of his calloused fingers, of cool metal, was nothing but businesslike and perfunctory at best, and Clint felt like he could die from it. Felt like he wouldn't mind. He sucked in a sharp breath as James tugged his shoulder back and, with the barest brush of heat, rested his hand at Clint's lower back to straighten his posture. James' eyes met his for just a fleeting second of heat before he ducked his head, his hair falling forward, and stepped quickly away. 

Clint had never wanted someone like this. Clint didn't know how the _fuck_ people survived it. 

"I don't know who to trust," he said, slamming his fist into unyielding canvas.

"Not me," James said instantly, and Clint let out a dumb shaky laugh and dropped down onto his ass. Woulda knocked himself out on the swinging heavy bag if James hadn't reached out to hold it still.

"Yeah," he said, helpless. "Kinda do, though." 

"You know nothing about me," James said, and Clint scrubbed the back of his forearm across his eyes. 

"So? Neither do you." 

James sank down to join Clint on the floor, hitching up his knees and resting his arms on them. He let out a slow breath. 

"Then I guess neither of us should trust me," he said, and smiled a small, wry smile that just about broke Clint's heart. 

There were two things you could do with broken things, Clint thought, as he rolled to his knees. You could fix them, glue them, pray they'd hold together good as new. James twitched against Clint's palm as he cupped the guy's jaw, like he wasn't sure if he should pull away or press in closer, and Clint was all for living in the space between those things. 

"Clint," James said, soft as breathing, and Clint cut him off with his mouth in a clumsy brush of lips against lips, like nothing else he'd ever felt before. 

'cos that was the other thing you do, with broken things. You could give up on them and grind them into dust. 

Their lips parted with a soft slick click, a last piece of debris settling to the ground. It should have echoed, maybe, because the room felt a hell of a lot bigger now. That or Clint felt all kinds of small. 

He didn't want to look at the expression on James' face. 

"That was dumb," Clint said, focusing on the rip in his sweatpants instead. Focusing on picking threads away from where he'd caught them when he tripped up the stairs earlier that day. "I get that that was dumb, but I swear to god if you tell me it was dumb because I'm seventeen I'm gonna punch you." 

He looked up then, snuck a glimpse like a snatched drowning gasp. No way he could translate that complexity of emotion without studying it, but there was no reason to even try; it was pretty clear it wasn't a _good_ expression, whatever the hell it was. 

Clint looked down again, at his hands this time. At the skin that was reddened and a little swollen, but he still hadn't quite worked hard enough to make an impact on at all. 

"Sorry," he said, and signed it too, knuckling hard at the skin over his heart like that would do something to soothe the storm going on under the surface. 

"No," James said, husky and low, and pushed to his feet, and his footsteps echoed around the infinite gym as he turned and walked out. 

The lights in most of SHIELD were on automatic, provided they sensed that there was, somewhere, still life. Senior agents called each other from different floors to borrow interns rather than get up out of their chairs, making them contort themselves idiotically until the lights came on again. Stay still long enough and they would flicker off around you, like you were barely even there. 

Clint was startled out of his thoughts when Rumlow almost tripped over himself in the doorway as soon as the lights flickered on.

"Jesus, kid," he said, in the danger zone between amused and pissed. "What the hell're you doing sitting in the dark?" 

"Dunno," Clint said. "Thinking." 

"Yeah, well, don't strain somethin'." Rumlow walked over to straddle the weight bench, smacking Clint in the side of his head with his towel on the way. "Hey, I was meaning to ask -" 

"Can it wait?" Clint interrupted. 

"Sure, I guess." Rumlow sounded kinda pissed, but Clint couldn't find it in himself to give all that much of a shit. Not even when he added, "Your loss." 

Clint couldn't face the showers. Wanted to go the hell home. So there was no explanation for how he found himself in the elevator, taking the exact same route he'd taken earlier in the day, only this time he made it all the way down the bland gray corridor and shoved Coulson's door open, unsurprised to find him still at his desk, head bowed over some paperwork. 

"Clint," Coulson said, and the pleasure that was audible in his voice pissed Clint off beyond the telling of it. 

"I liked her," he said, and he burned with humiliation when his voice couldn't get through it without showing the cracks. 

He hadn't thought he'd known Coulson well enough to see through the perfectly fitted persona; the thought that he was being _allowed_ to glimpse this made him feel a little sick. He watched the touch of surprise, the wavering between options, the firming of his jaw as a decision was made. He wondered how much of the way the thought process showed on his face was a carefully constructed lie. 

"You have no reason not to like her still," Coulson told him. "Natasha cannot be made to do anything she doesn't choose." 

"Like tell you secrets about me?" 

"Like spend time with you," Coulson said. "If she didn't want to -" 

"Bullshit," Clint snapped back. "She's watched Die Hard with me six and a half times." 

Coulson spread his hands a little - _I rest my case_ \- and Clint hunched his shoulders and clenched his fists. 

"I don't like this," he said, louder than he should. "I don't like anything about whatever the fuck this is. I don't give a shit who you think James is, I don't want you to show me any goddamn pictures, 'cos I'm not going to tell you anything about my friend." 

He turned and kicked out at an ugly rubbery plant, tipping it over onto the floor and feeling a moment of mean satisfaction that did a little to hold back the stupid goddamn tears that were lurking just behind his eyes. 

"And I'd have told you all of that if you'd asked me." Fuck. Fuck. Hold it together. "I'd've told you exactly that if you'd just fucking _asked_ but I wouldn't be half this fucking pissed about it, and I might have eventually talked to you again." 

"Clint -" 

"Go fuck yourself, Phil," Clint said, with vicious satisfaction, and slammed the door hard on his way out. 

*

The walk across the motel parking lot was at least twice as long as usual, that night. The motel that Clint was still living in, despite having been at SHIELD for so long. The motel that Clint tried not to look at in the daylight, 'cos at least flickering neon hid the worst of its sins. 

He dragged himself through the door and collapsed onto one of the flimsy wooden chairs by the wobbly table, just so he wouldn't fall straight to sleep. He fished out a half-finished bag of Lays and took a handful, rubbing the back of his wrist across tired eyes. 

One time the circus - the whole of it, every trailer and truck - had had to circle mindlessly around a succession of dusty back roads for three hours while they waited to see if their permits were valid. Clint had almost fallen asleep with the monotony of it, just about keeping his eyes open by looking out for the crooked tree, the half torn down advert for Jesus, the three-legged dog lapping water out of a tire. Barney'd been snoring in the back of the trailer, still breathing out beer fumes from the night before, and Clint had vaguely wondered how he'd react if he woke up and they were five towns over, on their way to somewhere that was Else. 

Clint'd never made a choice in his life, though, and fuck if he was gonna start then. 

Instead he'd followed the tail-lights of the clown car in front of him, checked off the tree and the Jesus, started looking forward to seeing the dog. A holding pattern. A time outside of time. 

He was gonna have to do something about SHIELD sometime soon, 'cos he was beginning to feel like he was back there again, caught in the monotony of somewhere he really didn’t want to be. He was gonna have to step up and make some kind of choice, 'cos otherwise he'd be stuck in this room forever staring at faded floral curtains and an oddly shaped stain. 

(He was gonna try not to think about how this analogy cast James in the role of a three-legged goddamn dog.) 

So on the one hand, Clint could make a go of this SHIELD shit. He could move into the barracks there, serve his time until he was legal. Get himself on a team and fight the good fight, get the latest in archery technology, swallow down the part of him that hated violence and everything his dad had chosen to be. He was pretty sure he could be good at it if he tried. 

On the other he could empty a couple of his bank accounts - maybe use the one with the money he'd legitimately earned - and buy an old junker, start driving anywhere until he found a place to settle down. 

And if both of the options sounded like opportunities _not_ to make choices or have to think for himself...

Clint looked at the clothes spilling out of the duffle bags and shoved himself to his feet, snagging shirts off the floor and rolling them into balls, trying to work out by eye what was dirty and what was clean. He was due a trip to the laundromat but this was more than that - he was gonna check out of the motel tomorrow whatever decision he made. 

Wherever he ended up, maybe he could get a couple things that weren't clothing that could be actually his. Like a Swiffer or a picture frame or a goddamn china dog. 

He showered and shaved and slid between the slightly crispy sheets, placing his aids within reach on the nightstand before turning on his side and curling around the spare pillow, taking far too long to fall asleep in the perfect silence, the neon-tinted dark. 

The locker in the train station just about held all three of his bags. Clint bought a cheap ball chain from a guy on the street outside, chucked the shitty 'tribal' charm in the trash and hung the key around his neck. 

It turned out that making decisions didn't get any easier just because you were determined to make them. He was hoping that caffeine would kick start something, and until he achieved that he was gonna head into SHIELD anyway, 'cos they were paying him decent money and he should probably let them know if he was going to leave. That was what you did with jobs, right?

The foyer looked like every single one ever featured in a procedural crime show, and Clint had got into the habit - after Tasha once spent a morning showing him how - of counting the weapons in the room. No one in SHIELD was nearly as harmless as they looked, and Clint was watching the patterns of shadow on overalls and wondering if the janitor was packing grenades when he ran right into Rumlow exiting the elevator. 

The guy looked tough as hell in the all-black uniform of STRIKE, like he could eat Clint for breakfast and still have room for bacon. (Possibly Clint should've snagged some breakfast on his way in to work.) He grinned when he saw Clint, wide and seemingly genuine, and clapped him on the shoulder with unnecessary force. 

"If it ain't Fido," he said, glancing at the clock over the reception desk and then back at him. "Just the puppy I was hoping to see." It was pathetic how much Clint had needed to hear that, probably. What with the mood he was in, thank fuck he hadn't run into James. 

As though the thought had summoned her, though, he saw a flash of red hair across the lobby, his stomach plummeting to around about his knees when he saw the slight smile on Natasha’s face as she spoke to a woman with blue eyes and a serious expression, someone with command just about written all over her. Why the hell had he ever believed she was just in it for his friendship? It was clear she had bigger fish to fry. 

Clint turned away, squaring his shoulders and shuffling closer to Rumlow. It wasn’t like Natasha was his only friend. 

"What did you want me for?" he asked, and Rumlow slung an arm around his shoulders and started tugging him to one of the corridors off the foyer, tapping a series of numbers into a keypad far too fast for Clint to see. 

"You're a pretty good shot, right?" Rumlow asked him, hurrying him past interchangeable gray-painted doors. "For a circus kid." 

"I never miss," Clint said, and bristled at the huff of amused breath. "Try me." 

"Well," Rumlow said, and side-on that was a pretty unsettling grin. "I mean, if you insist." 

The locker room he was dragged into already held a couple of similarly black-clad guys, lacing up boots and shooting the shit. One of them eyed Clint dubiously, folding his arms across his chest. 

"Seriously?" he asked, the tone of his voice flat. "You're bringing him?"

"Hey, Fido's a damned good shot, Johnson," Rumlow defended, pushing Clint forward a little, wrapping a warm hand around the nape of his neck. 

"Wait," Clint said, ignoring the slight tightening of fingers as he spoke. "You're bringing me where?" 

"We could use your - expertise,"Johnson said. "Assuming it exists." 

Clint shrugged off Rumlow's hand and shot a glance at the door, not sure what exactly was going on. "You guys know I'm seventeen, right? Coulson said -" 

"Fuck this." Johnson rolled his eyes and waved a hand at Clint. "You ain't coming. We'll take one of the hundred other good shots in this building. Go run back to daddy, huh?" 

Clint reacted without thinking, only missing breaking his hand on Johnson's jaw because Rumlow heaved him backward, chuckling in his ear. 

"Fuck you," Clint yelled. "I'm the best shot in the building, in the whole goddamn _state_ , you think I can't handle this?"

"I like him," said the guy who hadn't spoken so far. 

"See," Rumlow said, taunting grin audible in his voice, " _Rollins_ likes him." 

"Jesus _Christ_ ," Johnson said. "He fucks up, I'm leaving him behind." He stood up abruptly enough to shove the bench seat a little backward, and stormed out the door without another word. 

"Fuck Johnson," Rumlow said, "I've got your back." 

(It settled into the spot where Barney’s words had always settled, a kind of necessary warmth.)

*

Dressed in all black like the other members of STRIKE, sitting in the back of a panel van, Clint had a wave of unsettling deja vu. He clenched his hands around the bow they'd found for him, flexing against the carbon fiber, his breathing as quiet as he could make it 'cos he couldn't quite make it steady. 

"So what's the - what're we -?" 

Rumlow rolled his head against the headrest so he could look at Clint, only bothering to open one eye. 

"Rule one of STRIKE, kid," he said, the occasional flashes of streetlights through the windshield sparkling on his stubble, catching the edges of his grin. "Don't ask questions, just point and shoot." 

Clint smiled shakily back at him, his fingers white-knuckled, and numbly wondered if he was gonna throw up. Bitter anger - at Natasha, at Phil - had carried him this far; he’d show them, he’d thought, only now he wasn’t sure what he was trying to prove. It felt a little too much like being useful the way that Barney had always meant it, except Rumlow was a poor replacement, without the warmth of familiarity that Clint wanted. 

But he still didn’t have anywhere to goddamn run. 

The van pulled over in a weed-infested lot, cracked concrete and broken glass and empty baggies and used needles. Clint stood by while the others joked with each other quietly, loading up with weapons and body armor and - shit, black masks. He shook his head violently when Rumlow brandished one in his direction. 

"I don't -" he said, "I gotta be able to breathe right." 

Johnson swore, not putting in any effort to disguise his disdain. Rumlow shrugged and threw it back into the back of the van. 

"Fuck it, you won't be close enough for them to see your face." He slammed the doors, cutting off the bare illumination of the interior light, and leaned back against the van with his arms crossed across his chest. 

"We'll show you the door they'll be coming out of," he said. "Your job is to mop up any of the bastards that we don’t get. Pick the best apartment building for it, find your way up to the roof; don't fuckin' miss. Understood?" 

Clint nodded, cold flooding down his spine. He didn't want to open his mouth, 'cos he had no clue what the hell would come out. Instead he just followed them across the street, around a couple corners. It looked a lot like every other building on the street; cracked paint on the door, crumbling brickwork, words in a foreign alphabet painted on the sign. 

He wasn't completely naive, he thought, as he looked at the iron fire escape and ignored the stab of red-headed regret. He got that SHIELD did what it needed to do to maintain national security, to remove the people that were a threat. Clint just wasn’t sure that this was how it ought to be done, behind masks and in the dark. It felt too familiar, a life he'd hoped he'd managed to leave behind. 

He sprang up and grabbed the cold metal, swinging himself onto the fire escape with as little noise as he could manage and making his way up to the roof. He pulled his bow off his back and made his way over to the edge, crouching down by the low wall and waving a quick signal at Rumlow, who saluted him lazily and disappeared into an alleyway. 

Clint held himself tense and wished like hell he was back at the range. 

He almost jumped out of his skin when there was a flash and a muffled explosion, bright behind the glass-panelled doors. Clint nocked and drew, unerring focus until the doors were shoved open, people choking on the thick smoke that poured out with them. The first girl through had pulled the ends of her hijab up over her nose and mouth, but when she let it drop so she could take a deep breath of clear night air he could see that she was only barely older than he was. How the fuck could ending a life with that much left of it be the only goddamn solution? 

His fingers tightened on the string of his bow. 

It came down to trust. Could he trust that SHIELD was doing the right thing? Could he trust that secrets and lies and hidden motives could lead to what was best? Jesus, he'd known Barney his whole goddamned life and he still hadn't judged that one right, so how in hell was he supposed to go along with the twitching of his strings by hands he couldn't even see? 

The next breath Clint took felt like the first in a while. The exhalation was a string of curses and words that Madame Es had always said that _sounded_ like curses, and Clint sighted down his arrow at the entrance to an alleyway, waiting for the first hint of shifting black there. He saw the gun, and he saw the girl it was pointing at; he took a deep breath, and he fired. 

Rumlow screamed when Clint shot him, somewhere carefully picked not to cause long-term damage but to incapacitate and hurt like hell. Then he unslung his bow and his quiver and dropped them there at the edge of the roof, putting his shoulder to the roof access door and thundering down the stairs as fast as he could, knowing that if Rollins or Johnson made it out of the building before he hit the ground floor he was gonna be a dead man. 

Clint pulled his necklace out of his shirt and clenched the key in his hand hard enough to hurt, as he finally chose to run away from everything he knew. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks, as ever, to Dr G who picked me up on punctuation, CB who is a delightful encouragement, and Amy who asks all the important questions. Any remaining errors are down to what a lazy Saturday it's been, and entirely my own fault.

Clint was still sleeping on an inflatable mattress in the barn the first time Tasha showed up. He woke up, shrieked, rolled off his mattress backwards and came up holding a rusting watering can which he brandished in her unamused face. 

"What the hell," he panted, breathless and humiliated and surreptitiously trying to pull his blanket over his lap, 'cos he'd been dreaming of James again. "What the _hell_ , Tasha?" 

He had the sudden, horrifying thought that he had - he had fled a government agency after _shooting_ one of their _agents_ , shit, what if she was here to arrest him? He had nothing that could serve as any kind of defence, hadn’t even managed to get his own bow yet because the nearest specialist sporting goods store was a good few hours away. 

The fact that he wouldn’t dream of brandishing a weapon at Natasha, even if he had one, could remain purely hypothetical. 

“Do I need to start running?” he asked, and she rolled her eyes. 

"As though you could be faster.” Natasha reached around to the small of her back and pulled a small gun, showing him that the safety was on before tossing it over to bounce gently on his mattress. There was no way in hell that it was her only weapon, but as a symbolic gesture there was some reassurance in it. 

“I’m not in trouble?”

“Brock Rumlow was using SHIELD resources to carry out unsanctioned missions,” she said. “It appears he was pursuing goals that stretched farther than his ambition. We don’t know who he was working for yet, but -” she paused, delicately. “SHIELD is working to find out.” 

Clint rubbed a hand across his chin. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and his stubble scratched at his skin. 

“Doesn’t explain why you’re here,” he said. 

“You went. I missed you," she said, sitting serenely cross-legged in the middle of the concrete floor. 

Clint brutally shoved down the rush of flattered affection and threw the watering can towards the door, landing it unerringly on the pile of stuff that he wasn't going to keep. 

"Phil asked you to check up on me?" He pushed himself to his feet, blanket wrapped around him in an awkward sort of toga, and snatched up his water bottle to refill at the faucet outside. "Don't worry, you guys made sure I never knew anything important.” 

"Phil asked me to respect your privacy," Tasha told him with a shrug, then got fluidly to her feet to follow him out into the sunlight. 

It was a beautiful day. Sunny, cloudless blue sky, just enough of a breeze to make the tall grass sound like waves. Clint shoved his feet into battered sneakers and crunched along the gravelled path that encircled the barn, Tasha's footsteps falling in perfect sync with his, so it almost seemed like he was the only one there. He filled his water bottle and collected the solar cell he'd left at the corner there, carrying it back into the barn and plugging in his phone, Tasha determinedly at his heels through all of it. 

"Why are you _here_?" Clint eventually asked, collapsing into the steel-framed canvas chair he'd found in one of the more intact outbuildings. He didn't offer her a seat; he didn't have another. 

"Clint," she said, and her voice was low and serious and it sounded genuine, but how much exactly did that mean? "I _missed_ you. Everyone else is either scared of me or - well, James." 

He picked the label off his water bottle, devoting his full attention to the task so he could make it sound like he didn't care. 

"How's that my problem?" 

There was silence for a time, and then Natasha sighed, sinking down to sit again, crossing her legs and shoving her hands under her thighs. It was a strangely defenceless position, making herself vulnerable, and Clint was somehow reminded of a cat rolling over to show its belly. She muttered something that didn't sound familiar, unless his aids just weren't picking it up, and then made a face when she saw the lack of comprehension on his. 

"I'm sorry," she said simply. 

Clint wasn't exactly sure how to respond to that. It wasn't like, historically, apologies had ever really come his way. He shrugged one shoulder awkwardly and rubbed at the back of his neck. 

"Wanna come see my house?" he asked. 

Clint had stumbled over the house back in the spring. Literally stumbled over it; the wall that had once kept the borders of the place in something like order had collapsed what must've been years ago, and Clint had caught his foot on a moss-covered brick and nearly broken his toe. 

He'd been hitchhiking for a while, by that point, and he'd found that the world looked different and larger from the back seats of other people's cars. The lack of control coexisted uneasily with the inability to ever quite give it up; Clint got offers and insults and a knife pulled on him, once, and he never quite got to go to sleep. 

It wasn't so much that he had a destination in mind; he didn't bother with optimistic sheets of cardboard with a marker pen summary of his dreams. Mostly he just drifted vaguely southwards 'cos winter in New York had made his shoulders hurt, and figured he'd know where he was going when he found it. 

And then - keeping a sharp eye out for cars, 'cos it was impossible to hear them when he couldn't charge his aids - Clint had tripped over a brick and somehow turned his world upside down. 

It'd likely been a nice enough place in its day, but that day had long faded to twilit decrepitude. The house was two weatherbeaten storeys with a tumbledown porch out front, gaps in the railings like missing teeth. Blue tarpaulin flapping in the wind said a lot about the state of the roof, and a couple of windows were broken and letting the outside in. It looked like someone had made an effort at something like a garden, once, with raised beds left to look after themselves, and ivy was clawing its way up the porch like it wanted to drag it down with it. 

Clint wasn't sure what exactly about it had called to him, and it might have been a different story entirely if he'd found it in the fall. Spring was for optimism, it showed the place in a flattering light, and it’d conspired with Clint's exhaustion to make it look like it could be a home. 

The 'For Sale' sign had been weatherbeaten and sun-faded, and the farmer at the other end of the phone had been wary that Clint was playing some kinda trick. It'd taken a lot of persuading, but Clint had finally gotten him to drive out and meet him, and had waited on the porch in the last of the sunlight while the dusty old pick-up rattled up the pot-holed pretence at a drive. 

"You Barton?" the farmer called, and Clint had raised a hand in acknowledgement, too worn down to bother getting to his feet. "You're a kid," the man had said, when he was close enough to see. 

"I don't feel like it." He'd shrugged. "I'm a kid with money?" 

They'd haggled. Mostly it was Clint pushing the guy to take more, 'cos it was bad enough that his home was being bought with stolen money, he didn't want it bought with pity, too. 

"You realise how much work you're gonna have to do on this place?" The farmer, Mr. Reynolds, had eventually said, when Clint was trying to push him to take another ten grand. 

"Yeah," Clint'd told him, and his voice had been all kinds of grateful, and apparently that'd decided Mr. Reynolds that he might be crazy, but it was mostly the harmless sort. He still came by occasionally with sour cherry pies and casserole dishes, probably to make sure Clint hadn't accidentally nailed himself to a wall. 

So Clint didn't really want to look at Tasha's face when she saw the house. Even in spite of everything he still liked her, respected her, and he was scared that it'd make him feel different about what he'd made if he saw the barest hint of scorn on her face. 

He tried to look at it with fresh eyes, and all he could see were the flaws. He'd started with things that he couldn't fuck up too badly, nothing that'd affect the structural integrity of the place, and he winced a little to look at the railings he'd fixed up, the way they were still a little crooked. He'd got someone in to do the glass, so he guessed the windows were mostly okay, and now he was working on the roof. At least it wasn't visible from where they stood? 

The silence stretched out like the evenings after it got too dark to work, when Clint had nothing to do but think. He wasn't very good at it yet; his thoughts tended to start off free-flowing like water, but eventually all they did was circle the drain and wait to get sucked down. 

"I like it," Tasha said eventually, and her cool fingers brushed lightly against his wrist. "Will you let me help?" 

Clint made her wait on the porch while he went back to the barn to get himself some clothes. Someone was gonna come out and sort out the electricity a week from Tuesday, and a washing machine was gonna be delivered the day after that. For now he just had different clothes for different jobs, sawdust clothes and brick-dust clothes and clothes for grass-stains and mud, and one set he kept pristine for the times he had to thumb a lift into town and wash all the others, pick up some more non-perishable food that'd just about work over a camping stove. 

On reflection, maybe he should buy a truck. 

It was strange, having someone around. Clint was used to taking his ears out, hammering and sanding and sawing dulled down to almost nothing. Now he was working in a welter of construction sounds, plus a bunch of others he hadn't known were there. The gentle rumble-shush of the occasional car, the birds in the trees behind the house, the creaks and settlings of the bones of what he was fixing up. And, occasionally, Tasha's voice. Mostly she asked for instructions, at first. Where to start, what to do. Then, because she was Tasha, she started telling him instead; it was comforting in ways he hadn't known he'd needed, to do things right and get a small nod of approval. 

The conversation kind of snuck up on him, and he was somewhere in the middle of it before he'd even noticed they'd started. Just gossip at first - the milk run she'd been on, babysitting new agents; the endless debates over the mystery meat in the canteen; the fact that no one had yet beaten his time on the assault course, even though everyone was secretly giving it a try. 

"James has come closest," she said, and they both pretended to ignore how he fucked up the angle of his sawing and had to start the joint all over again. 

In the afternoon they went back to where she'd parked her rental by the barn. She drove him into town and bought him a late lunch of pizza and milkshakes, rolling her eyes at the speed he wolfed them down. 

"So how did you find me, anyway?" he said, and she laughed that it'd taken him this long. 

"I have my ways," she said, a slight smile curving her mouth. 

"Does Rumlow share those ways?" Clint asked, a sudden belated pulse of fear running through him that somehow hadn't penetrated the surreality of the day. 

"Rumlow is under investigation," Tasha said, the smile abruptly vanished, and she stabbed at her milkshake with her straw. "He won't be leaving the base any time soon." Clint let out a breath and she slanted him a sidelong look that held questions he hadn't a hope of answering, that she was good enough not to ask. "But no, ptichka," she said. "He is not nearly so good as me." 

The drive back to the house was quiet, contented in a way that Clint didn't really understand. 

"I'd like it if you came by again," he said, staring out of the window into the endless dark, and he could hear the smile in her voice when she replied. 

"I would too." 

They drew up to the barn with the gentle crunch of gravel, and everything was silent when the engine switched off. Clint hadn't decided yet if he liked it or not; it was _different_ , which mattered, and for now that was enough. 

"Here," she said, and passed over two small pieces of paper that, in the darkness, were impossible to read. "If you need me." 

The rumble of the car as she left was impossibly loud.

Clint pulled his wind up torch out of his pocket and squeezed the handle until it was bright enough to see by. _Natasha_ followed by a string of digits on one piece of paper; the other number was labelled _James_. 

He stuffed them into his pocket and resolved not to think about them until it was morning, 'cos his thoughts in the darkness weren't ever exactly to be trusted. 

(Which didn't explain why the blue light of his phone caught on the edges of the table saw, the mower he still hadn't managed to fix. _Hey_ , he typed. _its Clint_ , and stayed up far too long waiting for a reply.)

The next day dawned sunny enough, but come lunchtime and the sky was getting ominous, capping off the world with a gray-painted ceiling and trying to blow Clint off the damned roof. He secured the tarpaulin as best as he could and climbed back down to ground level, considering the woodwork he had going on in the living room before deciding to make a run for the barn. He wasn't sure he'd seen rain approach from such a distance before, watching the wall of water make its way up the road, and he left it a little late to duck inside and haul the huge doors shut. Clint ran a hand through his wet hair and blew droplets off the end of his nose, rummaging through one of his duffle bags for the oil-streaked SHIELD shirt that'd hold in some of his warmth. 

Mr. Reynolds thought he was a dumbass, he'd made that more than clear, but Clint still hadn't given up on the old mower he'd found in the back of the barn. He didn't like tossing things that had no reason not to work, and tilting at mechanical windmills was what days like this were made for. 

In the dim light from the lantern - batteries, Clint added to the mental list of things he needed to go to town for, although up to now it had mostly only been Cheetos - he laid out the pieces of the engine he was halfway through dismantling, the manual he'd borrowed from the library kept open by the end of his grappling arrow. He had no idea whether he was making any progress or not, but he was starting to get to know what all the pieces were called, what they looked like and how they fit together under their coating of grime. It was something, it was a start; it was better than just starting over and replacing the things that wouldn't work right away. 

He got so wrapped up in what he was doing that his phone rattling across the floor near enough made him jump out of his skin. And it'd be nice to say that he let it wait - that he finished reading the chapter he was reading, or the sentence, or the _word_ \- but he dived for it right away, scraping his hand down the front of his shirt so he could clear enough oil from his fingers to unlock the screen. 

(The resulting mess was probably something that a little dish soap could fix.)

 _who else would be texting me_ , his phone asked, the lack of question mark somehow making it surlier, somehow making it more precisely _him_. Clint bit down on his grin, for just as long as it took for him to realise that this was his goddamned barn and he could smile if he wanted to. It was confirmation that he'd been needing that James had been okay with Tasha passing his number along to Clint; that he'd maybe asked her to. 

That Clint hadn't, with one idiot act, wrecked the friendship they'd had. 

_so i hear i'm still the greatest marksman,_ Clint sent, set James' contact as the picture of the metal middle finger he received in return. 

*

It was - easier to be alone now that he had someone to talk to, but that didn't mean it wasn't something he was looking to change. He kept himself busy enough, and Mr. Reynolds' periodic visits got him a little conversation, but increasingly it didn't feel like it reached quite to the edges of his lonely, more like it was falling just short of bridging a gap. 

Clint finally gave in and bought a truck for $300 from Mr. Reynolds' daughter. It was old and loud and painted a pretty terrible shade of green, but it was good enough to get him into town and back, and that was good enough for him. 

It probably didn't take too much to become a regular when the town had a population in the hundreds, but Clint had never really had somewhere he could ask for his usual and have them know what to make. The feeling was like a warm blanket, in that sometimes Clint wanted to settle into it, wrap it around himself and grin; other times it was too much for him, and he wanted to shrug the whole thing off him, maybe gas up his truck and just drive. 

It didn't help that he had maybe the two most paranoid people on the planet as his only real friends. 

_im not shooting anyone._

Clint was texting Tasha, sitting at his favourite table in Where You Bean. She was wary as hell of small town hospitality, and apparently she felt it was an unacceptable risk that people could just walk up to his porch and leave pies there, any time of the day or night. Clint, in contrast, was all for it, especially when it was Mrs Gunderson's banana cream and he finally had a refrigerator that worked. 

_Then someday I will find you in your basement with your heart on a pie plate and a fork in your hand._

Coffee was not nearly so pleasant an experience when it was snorted out through the nose. 

_you need to stop watching crime shows_ he sent back, fishing for a napkin and mopping himself up. He smiled at the barista who was watching him with one eyebrow raised, and she rolled her eyes and turned to serve a guy in an expensive suit. 

The large windows at the front of the shop hadn't done enough to prepare him for the low angle of the sun, and he squinted out into the golden afternoon, taking a moment on the doorstep for his eyes to adjust. A gentle whine drew his eyes down to the rail beside the door, where the friendliest golden lab-mix he'd ever seen was staring hopefully up at him, head cocked to one side. It looked like it had had a pretty tough time in life, a scar across its muzzle and one of its eyes gone, but it still smiled wide and panted happily, and Clint was instantly charmed. 

"Oh, hey," he said, dropping instantly down to his knees, reaching out to rub a silky ear between his finger and thumb. "Hey, dog." 

The dog butted into his hand, his tongue lolling out of a big dumb grin, and Clint scratched over his head and rubbed him just behind his ears. 

"Aren't you just a gorgeous boy," he said. 

"Better watch out, kid," a voice said above him. "That little asshole bites." 

"What, this guy?" Clint squinted up at the man from the coffee shop, the one in the unnecessarily expensive suit. "Nah, he's a marshmallow, see?" He lunged a little forward, got into the dog's face, and the dog just plopped onto his backside, looking kinda confused. 

"Ah, an expert, huh?" There was something weird about the man's voice, like all the friendly was layered over something else that glinted beneath the surface but couldn't be seen. Clint scrambled back up to his feet, filled with the irrational fear that the guy would - publicly, in the middle of the prettiest hour of the afternoon - pull back and kick him in the head. He shook it off, felt kind of like an idiot for it, but there was a chill that hadn't been there before.

"No," Clint said, "not me." He smiled, ducked his head, made himself look as harmless as possible and took care to direct himself around the guy. He couldn't help looking back over his shoulder, though, to see that - yeah, he was taking the dog. 

_maybe i wanna shoot one person,_ Clint sent, just as soon as he was out of sight. 

_You have a farm now,_ Tasha sent back, _endless possibilities for hiding the body._

Clint laughed, bright and loud and shameless, and swung himself back into his truck, his phone beeping in his pocket. 

_Natasha says you're gonna keep pigs,_ James said, and then, _best way to hide a body._

And man, his friends were terrifying, but they were the goddamned best. 

He tried to keep that in mind that night. He'd dragged his inflatable mattress out of the barn and made an ass of himself attempting to manhandle it through the front door, trying it three different ways and barking his knuckles on the splintering door frame before he worked out that the best plan was to deflate the damn thing. It started raining before he could go out to the barn - one of those sudden dark walls of water that felt a little like they could drown you standing up - and he didn't much feel like trudging out to the barn again through it, not even for the foot pump he'd left out there. So he made do with a bed that didn't quite manage to keep him off the hard floor, startled away from the edge of sleep by the settlings of a house that he hadn't taken the time to get used to. To add the insulting to the unsettling, neither Tasha nor James was answering his messages, leaving him high and dry and prey to whatever chittering things wanted to emerge from the deep waters of his subconscious. 

He didn't get a whole lot of sleep, that night. 

So the next day was another coffee day. Now the house was all wired up for electricity - the downstairs, at least, until he was done with the roof - it would've been fairly simple to just get himself a bargain basement coffeemaker and wake himself up that way, but Clint was starting to feel part of a community in a way he hadn't quite since the circus, and this one was a hell of a lot more reliable. He was starting to think about farmers' markets, and harvest festivals, and community meetings god help him, and he kept casting a curious eye over the bulletin board by the coffee shop door. 

It almost slammed into him, opened impatiently enough to knock the brass bell from its hook, and Clint watched from the small triangle of space behind the door when the same guy in a different but equally expensive suit walked in like he owned the place, ordered like he was issuing some kinda presidential decree. Clint sidled around the door and outside, figuring his coffee could wait until the shop was certified asshole free. Plus there was always the possibility that - yeah, the dog was tied up at the railing, grinning up at him, and Clint resisted for all of six seconds before crouching for a tongue bath again. 

He took a selfie with the mutt, matching him grin for grin, and sent it to James' phone. _At least someone loves me,_ he sent with it, 'cos there was still no word from the night before; it took him all of ten seconds to regret basically everything he had ever chosen to be. 

It was bad enough that he'd try to kiss the guy, that he'd been summarily rejected and they'd barely started speaking again. Now he was acting like the high school kid he'd never actually had the opportunity to be, passive-aggression and petty jealousy, a useless endeavour because it wasn't like James had anything like feelings, when it came to him. 

_cute dog_ , James sent back. Clint let out a long breath and shoved his phone deep into the bottom of his pocket, pushing up to his feet. He scratched the dog behind the ear before he crossed the road to the little hardware shop, and by the time he'd finished arguing with Mr Cohen about copper piping and mower parts he couldn't face the idea of cooking ramen over a camping stove, so he wandered down the main street. 

It was the end of an extended summer, the heat not altogether willing to loosen its grip and hand over the town to the fall. In spite of this, a few of the trees were starting to go red at the edges, and the distant roar of a premature leafblower was only occasionally interrupted by the sounds of passing cars. The summer vacation had packed up and left, taking with it the sounds of skateboards and breaking voices, the small amount of bustle these streets ever saw. When he pushed through the door of a little Italian place he was the only person in there except for the gossiping waiters behind the bar, who eyed him curiously as he lurked in the doorway and then shuffled a little further in, embarrassed by their attention into getting himself some lunch. 

The food was average but there was plenty of it, and even substandard pizza was a thousand times better than the ramen he had stacked up by the foot of his inflatable bed. Buying an oven was next on his list, but it was one of those adulthood markers that gained unnecessary weight in the contemplating. Like - how was he supposed to know what an oven should look like, what an oven should cost, what the hell an oven should be? He'd lived in a trailer with his brother half his life, and he couldn't remember his mom using the stove even once before that. Who was he kidding? He was gonna end up ordering pizza from the substandard Italian place every night of his life, with ramen for the occasions it closed and Mrs Gunderson's pie for as long as she spared him the pity. 

Clint huffed, tired all of a sudden, and beckoned over the waiter to ask for the bill and a box for the rest of his pizza. As he fished out his wallet he stole a glance at his phone, blinking at the number of notifications there. 

_Whose dog did you steal?_ was the latest, from Natasha, and Clint balanced the warm box on the palm of his hand and called her with the other, shoving through the door to the street outside and pondering whether to head straight for his car. 

"How'd you know about the dog?" he asked.

"I'm offended I didn't get sent a picture of it," she said, "although I suppose I would have had to look at your face." 

"James showed you?" Clint did his best to lessen the size of his smile, at least in the tone of his voice, but he was pretty sure he did a terrible job. 

"James asked me how to set a contact picture," Natasha said, and the warmth of her words settled deep in Clint's stomach and made itself at home there. 

"I'm glad you guys are looking after each other," Clint said, and he meant it almost entirely. 

"And have you made any friends that aren't on four legs?" 

Clint shrugged, had to shift his balance quickly to maintain structural integrity of the pizza. 

"I'm working on it," he said, and huffed out a laugh. "I'm gonna go to a community meeting, maybe." 

Natasha made a considering noise into the phone, and he could picture the precise expression on her face; even over the miles between them it made Clint feel as though she could see inside his head. 

"Very grown up," was all she said, and he tucked those words away safe, too. 

"What've you been up to?" he asked, and found himself a bench to sit on under the spreading, reddening limbs of a strongly rooted tree, her slyly amused voice weaving a tale about junior agents and failed map-reading and an extremely disgruntled goat. "Hey Tasha," he said, when he'd recovered the breath he'd lost in laughter, "I'm really glad I met you." 

"You have made my life inestimably worse," she said, "and yet." 

"Come and visit again soon," he said, all in a rush. "Come and stay. I'm nearly done with the roof, there's at least one dry room, I can get you a bed -" 

"You spoil me," she said, dryly amused. 

"I know how to show a girl a good time." He surprised her into laughter, an inelegant snort that felt like a prize. 

"You are a disaster." There was a distant voice on the other end of the line, and she sighed. "And I am keeping another one waiting, so I must go. I'll see you soon." 

"Tell him to call me!" He wasn't sure she'd heard, the dial tone buzzing in his ear, but he was left with a smile in any case, taking a moment to bask in the sun that filtered through the leaves. 

Eventually something had to be done with the day, though, and Clint took his small bag of optimistic mower parts and his non-noodle dinner, stopped off at the library on his way to where he'd parked his car so he could take a look at the recipe books, pick out titles for when he had the oven that he was going to get on and buy. 

It took him until he had slung his purchases onto the passenger side seat and buckled himself in to remember that there had been other messages on his phone. He scrolled back through them, grinning at Tasha's complaints, reading backwards through James' unnecessarily detailed plan that he didn't even work out the point of until the fifth message, when he finally figured that it was about stealing the damned dog. And then there was the other message, the one that had been sent before all the rest, sitting just under _cute dog_ like it was equally innocuous and held just as little weight. 

_and thanks_ it said, _i kinda missed your face._


	6. Chapter 6

The community meeting was held in one of those all-purpose halls with a makeshift stage at one end and teetering stacks of plastic chairs at the other. Clint made himself useful when he arrived, allowing a lady in a burgundy sweatsuit to direct him around with stacks of chairs. She told him stories about her grandchildren while he set them out in neat rows, and a tale about a war of attrition involving a garden fence and a huge pile of zucchini while he fetched the coffee urn from the kitchen and set it on a shaky table. By the time people started filtering in he was on his knees under the table and trying to fix one of the supports back in place, and it was like he'd lived here all his life. Babs - with the sweatsuit, and a shock of violently red hair - kept referring back to conversations they'd had five minutes before when she was talking to new people, all 'Clint said this' and 'Clint thinks that'; he had to keep turning around to wave at people so they weren't just getting introduced to his ass. When he finally emerged from under the table and stood, brushing off his hands before giving the table a gentle push that it stood up to admirably, he got an actual round of applause. 

Clint poured himself a cup of terrible coffee and went to sit in the row of chairs closest to the stage, where Babs had fiercely saved him a seat, even with all the empty ones around her. She opened her enormous purse when he sat and handed him one of those individual packets of cookies, like she'd stolen them out of a hotel. 

"Thanks," he said, and she nodded, then looped a pair of glasses on a chain around her neck, got out a notebook and a neat gold pen, and carefully tucked her purse under her chair. 

"Now," she said, as the double doors at the back of the room swung open and shut, over and over, and the murmur of chatter in the room started to gradually increase. "The first lady who's going to speak is Marjory Burns. She's a petty housecat with the brains of a flea, and there's really no call to listen to her. We used to put her on last, but we found that she can't ignore the five minute bell so easily if there's someone coming after to push her off the stage." 

Clint snorted and choked on cookie crumbs. Babs patted him on the back with a practiced motherly air. 

"Now after Marjory will be Ted. He's the only reason we bother with the microphone, since he seems to think his belt buckle's the only one of us worth talking to. He'll likely tell us that the community garden project is stalled again, which is frankly a damned shame." The chairs around them were filling up, now, even with the rest of the hall remaining empty, and most people were leaning in to hear better, but Babs ignored them all and still acted like she was only talking to him. It was kinda nice. "After that we'll be treated to a number of complaints, only half of which're worth the time it'll take to listen to them, and then we'll decide what to do about 'em and likely put most to the vote. You need a good strong arm for that one, because Jenny Clarkson is just about the slowest at counting I ever saw." She gave him a sideways smile and patted at his arm. "Of course, you won't have a problem with that." 

"I get to vote? I've barely lived here five minutes." 

"Anyone who shows up gets to vote," she said. "It's a simple system but we've found it works. Generally anyone who's willing to listen to a five minute talk on vegetable garden border disputes is patient enough to consider their decisions carefully." 

"Plus you've got the endorsement of the mayor," the man behind Babs said with a grin. She turned around and tutted at him, tapping him gently on the cheek with her notepad. 

"Now you know I won't get swayed by a pretty face," she said, and Clint gaped at the side of her head. 

"You're not the mayor," he said, and it was difficult to imagine that it came out like he meant. "Are you?" 

"Barbara Cunningham," she said, holding her hand out and putting a decent dent in his when she squeezed it. "Mayor of this fine city for the last seven years, ever since my mom finally stepped aside." 

"Wow," he said, and her eyes narrowed a little, but she apparently allowed that he might be genuine, because she willingly squeezed in next to him when he asked if he could take a selfie with her. 

"Who's that for?" she asked, making no bones about her nosiness. "Your girlfriend?" 

Clint kinda scoffed, and her expression turned shrewd.

"Boyfriend, then?"

"I don't -" Clint said, feeling a tell-tale blush inexorably rising in his cheeks. "We're not -" He flailed a little, embarrassed beyond the telling of it by her growing grin. 

"Well you're too cute to be lonely for long." Her tone was matter-of-fact and Clint slumped in his seat, covering his face with his hands. "If you decide against this fella, you should consider my sister's littlest, Kyle. He's pretty as a picture, even if he can't find his ass with both hands and a compass." 

"I'm good." Clint's voice was muffled, and he listened to her laughing at him with the sort of fondness mixed with humiliated despair that Tasha frequently inspired. 

He sent the picture to James, telling him that he'd found future-Natasha and that his closest town was either gonna be incredibly organised under a reign of terror, or it was gonna be burning down within the week. He thought it'd make James smile, beautiful but a little lopsided, and it'd be great if the twist of his stomach at the thought of that could quit it. Any time now. 

The beginning of the meeting was everything Babs had said it would be, but before they could get onto the complaining - and Clint could go for another coffee while they sorted themselves out - a familiar man made his way to the stage. In a town where the mayor settled herself in the front row with a sweatsuit, his expensive suit ought to have made him look a little ridiculous; instead, somehow, he made everyone else feel like they were underdressed. It was the air he had about him, the aura of matter-of-fact superiority he wore like a crown. His hair was cut close to his head and difficult to assign a shade, and his eyes were an unsettling pale green, and they swept the hall as he turned to face the audience, not needing the height of the stage to add to his presence. 

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, and Babs made a rude noise, putting her hand on Clint's arm and letting him push her up to her feet. 

"Mr. Egorov." There wasn't much of the loving grandmother left about her, and her voice and her spine were like steel. "If you'll take a moment to remember our conversation -" 

"I merely wanted to allow the townsfolk to -" 

"- you'll recall," Babs said, raising her voice and effortlessly drowning him out, "that I said you could present your offer _once the investigation has been carried out_ -" 

"- hear the opportunity I'm offering for themselves," he continued, quiet but relentless, like a mosquito's whine in an empty room.

"- and once we've weeded out the inevitable bullpucky, Mr. Egorov, 'cos that sure as hell seems like something you’re full of. You're not welcome here until then." 

The man drew himself up to his full height, and Clint finally placed it, the resemblance that'd had him quailing. More than anything else, the guy reminded him of Duqesne, the Swordsman. That arrogance, that attitude, and more than anything that sense of danger, of a blade barely sheathed. 

"It seems irresponsible, as mayor, to allow your town to be impoverished through your inaction, when -" 

"She asked you to leave," Clint said, getting smoothly to his feet. He noticed, surprised, that the guy was a little shorter than him. He leaned in a little, lowered his voice. "And I'm not saying I could make you, but I'm pretty sure I'd enjoy giving it a try." 

The pale green eyes narrowed, the look in them frigidly furious, but he backed down a little, straightened his jacket and stalked to the back of the hall. 

"I don't like that guy," Clint said, thoughtful. "I'm gonna steal his dog." 

With the drama at an end, there was a swell of babbling voices, questions flying at Babs thick and fast. Clint eeled sideways, towards the coffee urn, and then got a little distracted when his phone buzzed in his pocket. 

It was an awkwardly angled selfie, the photographer clearly unused to the process. James and Tasha were somehow both squashed in closely together and determinedly not touching, and the scowl on Tasha's face was almost as adorable as the confusion on James', looking off to the left of the camera and squinting like operating his phone was an impossible task. It was possibly the most unflattering picture that could ever have been taken of two of the most beautiful people Clint knew, and he immediately set it as his background and sent back a row of hysterically laughing emojis, a thumbs up, a firework. 

And then, a little awkwardly, all on its own, a stupid purple heart. 

"Settle down!" Babs was yelling, when he returned his attention to the rest of the room, and people were obviously used to doing what she said; gradually the crowd subsided into their seats and the ruckus faded to a low grumble. Clint sat down again, carefully settling his over-full coffee onto his knee, and Babs stomped up the stairs to the stage if only so they'd feel worse when she turned and planted her hands on her hips, glaring down at them like a disappointed headteacher. 

"So that's Mr. Egorov. He owns about twenty acres outside of town, and he's looking to extend his ownership into it. He's offering a hell of a lot of money to buy up public land, and it's my considered opinion that he's so full of shit that his back teeth are buried." 

"What's he want the land for?" 

Babs squinted into the audience, picking out the speaker. 

"He's being mighty evasive about that one, Mark." 

"Well maybe he's fixin' to bring in some jobs," someone else called; a woman at the front nodded. 

"He's plenty rich," she said, "you see the gold watch he had?" 

"That Rolex was fake," Clint put in, not too quietly, and kinda hoped no one would ask him how he knew. 

“Mr. Egorov started out looking all sweet and bringing me flowers,” Babs said, unimpressed, “and next thing you know he’s surveying land that ain’t for sale and offering casual work to the folks down at Rick’s bar without quite saying outright what he wants ‘em to do. I trust him a hell of a lot less far than I could throw his skinny heinie, so I’d consider it a personal favour if y’all’d allow me to look into him a little more before agreeing to have him as a neighbour.” 

“Well,” Mark said slowly, scratching slow fingers through his beard, “we ain’t the only folks in town, though.” 

“You let me worry about that,” Babs said, “and maybe the Sheriff if I can get myself any evidence the man’s crooked,” but Clint figured he’d keep an eye out, too. 

*

Clint got through a good third of his birthday before he'd quite realised that was what it was, and he wasn't sure he'd have noticed at all if Natasha hadn't been perched on the hood of a rental in his driveway when he came in from the barn, following the growl of his stomach. 

She was wearing good, sturdy boots, and her pants had a small streak of sap on one leg. Clint looked at her for a long moment, then eyed the back seat of her car curiously, the curl of wire and carabiners, the betraying glint of a lens. His jaw clenched, kinda involuntarily, and he looked at her for a long moment while she watched him back with a blank expression. 

Made sense they’d want to keep an eye on him, and there was nothing interesting they were gonna see. If this was the price of remaining a free man, after what he did to Rumlow, after running away from SHIELD… "Happy 18th, ptichka," she said, and there was something a little tentative about her smile. Clint made the decision to smile back, after a moment, and decided not to worry about what she’d been up to until he had to. He could always find any hypothetical cameras later, sell the parts to the guy in the hardware store, and whether or not he trusted Natasha there was only one person he’d rather spend his birthday with. 

He figured if he was ever gonna get away with it now was the time, and swept her up into a tight hug, reveling in the warm pressure in his arms - it’d been a hell of a long time since he’d had that. She allowed it for a good thirty seconds before she started making threatening noises, and he honestly couldn't have asked for a better birthday gift. They took Clint's rattletrap truck into town, 'cos Natasha refused to consider his array of campfire-friendly foods, and they settled on a little diner tucked away off the high street, the gently worn colors and cracked vinyl on the booths taking nothing away from its charm. Tasha insisted she was buying him lunch, so Clint ordered a Belly-Buster Burger and a chocolate milkshake so tall his straw couldn't reach the bottom. Tasha went for a mushroom omelette and a root beer float, and looked a little surprised when her omelette was big enough to flop over the sides of her plate. "I'm a growing boy," Clint said defensively when she gave him a long look, and she snorted and stole a handful of fries. It was nice, catching up. It was nice that SHIELD was far enough behind him now that the resentment had mostly faded, although he was still kinda pissed at Phil. Mostly he was just waiting for news of James, and it took everything he had not to interrupt her training stories to ask. It helped that the burger in front of him took some serious maneuvering to fit in his mouth, and the chilli-cheese-bacon combo went a good way towards gluing it shut. "James," she finally said, unprompted, and Clint's cheeks were bulging enough that his idiot grin was at least a little suppressed. "He is a good enough partner, I suppose, but I would have preferred to be working with you." "Coulson has you guys working together?" Clint managed, around a mouthful of damned fine food. Tasha raised an eyebrow at his manners, but Clint honestly wasn't sure why she'd expected any different, and returned her look with a messy grin. “I don’t remember you doing much missioning while I was -” His stomach sunk abruptly. “Oh,” he said. “Coulson had you babysitting.” 

“I was staying in SHIELD because I was _trying_ to train a new partner,” she said, with a brief glower. She stole another of his fries and dipped it into his drink, humming thoughtfully at the taste. "Coulson has very little control over what I do," she eventually said, "although I allowed him to convince me to try this. James and I were already training together, since we no longer had you to -" "Torture?" Clint put in. "Maim. Break into tiny miserable pieces." "Always so dramatic," she said, but she couldn't hide her tiny smile. "We work well together, but he has very little sense of humour." She considered Clint narrowly. "The more so, since you went away." Clint poked at his burger, feeling the idiot flush in his cheeks, not sure exactly what to say to that. He felt there was some kinda fundamental misunderstanding on Tasha's part - he and James'd been working towards something lately, building a friendship on late-night texts and unflattering photos, but there was still that fundamental tripping point where Clint had been an idiot and pushed for something James evidently didn't want. "Yeah, well, if he misses me so much he knows where I am," he said.

“It is sweet that you think he would be allowed to leave alone.” 

Clint’s head jerked up, and he regarded her narrowly. She shrugged. 

“I told you he was an assassin when we met. You’re surprised SHIELD has him in a tight grip?” 

“I’m surprised you’re telling me.” Clint poked at a lump of ice-cream thoughtfully. “You’ve gotta know my first reaction is going to be thinking of ways to bust him out.” 

“If it gets you back to SHIELD -” 

Natasha sighed when she saw the face he made. 

“It’s not the life I want,” he said. She regarded him for a moment, her eyes flicking over his face and her expression unreadable, before finally, slowly, she nodded. 

Clint wasn’t sure what to do with her understanding so he stared over her shoulder, watching the cook moving around through the kitchen hatch, thinking about both of the lives he’d turned his back on. He didn’t want to find himself in that position again, being used like a glove puppet to keep someone else’s hands clean. He didn’t want Barney or Rumlow or Trick or even Konrad to manipulate him into doing something that turned his stomach, and as much as he was growing to love Natasha he knew that - if she _needed_ to - she’d do exactly the same. Going back to SHIELD would mean putting the control back in someone else’s hands, and he liked the calluses that the hard work that _he chose_ had put on his own. 

“It’s likely that he will be given more leeway as he proves himself worthy of trust,” Natasha said. She cut a neat slice of her omelette and looked pleasantly surprised at the taste. “If he performs well when he works with me, if he is able to take direction and -” 

“Obey the puppeteer,” Clint muttered, stabbing one of his fries into his milkshake. 

“...and remain loyal to the agency,” she continued, throwing him a sharp look, “then - well. We shall see.” 

There was only so long they could drag the meal out, and soon enough Clint found himself turfed out on the sidewalk with Natasha, warm and happy and belly tight as a drum. He grinned and swayed so his shoulder knocked against hers, and she sent him a smile that had him almost tripping into a garbage can. They wandered along Main Street, making up ominous backstories for all the people they saw, basking in the last of the summer’s sun. Natasha hustled Clint into the store he’d been basically living out of - full of camping stoves and tarpaulins, sleeping bags and walking boots - and bought him a decent down-filled jacket with about a hundred hidden pockets. The sales guy kept trying to tell Clint what they were all supposed to be for, but he got unnerved and went away when Natasha started listing the weapons that’d fit. 

“Now perhaps I won’t find you frozen to death in your own living room,” she said, zipping it up over his chin, and Clint thought _really hard_ about hugging her, ‘cos he figured she’d be able to read that on his face. 

The little movie theater that - along with the attached bowling alley - served as pretty much the town’s entire entertainment was showing a string of badly dubbed martial arts films, so Clint dragged Natasha in and bought her popcorn, too happy to give a shit when the dialogue was drowned out by the sound of the occasional strike. It took him a while to find his phone when it started beeping, due to the sheer number of goddamned pockets, and he garnered some seriously filthy looks - but it was worth it. He opened the message to see a red balloon with a scribbly grumpy face drawn on it, _Happy Birthday_ written underneath in incongruously neat script.

Clint was practically giddy when they walked out onto the sidewalk again, the street lights flickering into life. It was the first birthday he could remember that’d made him grin; shit, it was the first birthday that he could _remember_ , ‘cos growing up it’d always just been another day. He tried to explain that to Natasha, all expansive arm movements and smiles, and she watched him for a moment before linking her arm with his and towing him across the street. 

“C’mon, birthday boy,” she said. “You need a drink.” 

*

It wasn’t like Clint had ever had much of a problem getting served, not since the growth spurt Barney’d complained about when he was 16, but Rick’s wasn’t the kind of place that ever asked your age in any case. It was - well, in any other town it’d probably have been a dive bar, but in this one there were too few options for anyone to make much of a fuss. It had mismatched chairs and dim bulbs to save on the cleaning, a small selection of spirits behind the bar and only a couple beers on tap. Clint looked longingly at the dart board when they walked in but Natasha dragged him to a booth and trapped him in there by placing her phone on a beer mat - to protect it from the stickiness - and telling him in a few efficient words what she’d do to him if anything happened to it. 

She returned after far too short a time for the size of the crowd at the bar, a beer in one hand and a shot of vodka in the other. Clint reached for the beer but she placed both of the glasses in front of him, making a rueful face when he lifted an eyebrow. 

“One of us has to drive home, durak,” she said, “and you know James will hunt me down if anything happens to you.” 

“Wish you wouldn’t keep saying shit like that,” Clint muttered, grimacing as the vodka burned the back of his throat. 

“I wish you had the sense to know that it’s true,” she shot back. 

The second shot burned less; by the third Clint was barely staying on his chair, slumped loosely against the back of his seat and grinning at the universe. He laughed when his phone buzzed against his thigh, but he staggered out back to find the bathrooms before he checked it, knocking his shoulder against the wall and lurching sideways. The door he hit didn't lead helpfully to the mens room but out into a little courtyard out back, trash cans and cigarette butts and a Staff Only sign that he chose to ignore. The door swung closed behind him and - because this was his life, and this was the kinda thing that happened to him - there was the tell-tale click of a latch. He'd swear, but the situation was getting kinda desperate, so first he unbuttoned his pants and pissed into the drain by the back gate, just about keeping his balance with one hand on the wall. 

Whether it was emptying his bladder or getting some fresher air, Clint found that his head had cleared a little. He leaned against the cold brick of the wall of the bar and tilted his head back, blinking as the stars swirled just slightly out of place. It wasn't the first time he'd been drunk - he'd grown up in the goddamn circus - but it was the first time he'd felt this good about it. First time he'd done it without Barney, too, and that wasn't a train of thought that he was interested in buying a ticket to ride. 

A gently inquisitive bark drew his attention, and Clint grinned widely when he saw a familiar friendly one-eyed face peering through the metal grille of the gate. The dog was tied up outside, and the gate was padlocked shut, so the best he could do was crouch down - carefully, fingers pushed between thin metal bars - and scratch as much of the dog’s head as his fingers could reach. He wondered for a second what a fancy guy like Mr. Egorov was doing at a place like Rick’s, but he didn’t have much time to ponder it. 

His phone buzzed in his pocket - once, and again, and then another time, and it took him that long to work out that it was someone calling him. 

"Yeah?" His tongue felt too big for his mouth, slow and unwieldy. There was a whisper of a sigh across the line and he already felt his mouth curling around his happiness, even before he consciously recognised the exasperation. 

"I told her not to get you drunk," James said, and it was like Clint could hear his scowl. He pushed up to his feet, unsteadily. 

"'s why we don't let you be in charge." The silence hung there for a little while, accusing, and Clint snorted. "Don't tell me you waited until you were old enough to get yourself a drink." 

"I don't remember," James said, just like he always did, and Clint made a rude noise into the phone. 

"It's my birthday," he said. "I can do what I want." 

"That right?" 

"Well almost," Clint said, and his stomach almost turned itself inside out while he cleared his throat but he said it anyway, "only you're not here." 

This time the silence was filled up with the gently pink fizzing of Clint's embarrassment. It settled into his chest and felt steadily worse the longer the silence went on. 

"Clint -" 

"You should wish me a happy birthday," he said. "Natasha's waiting, and she has beer." 

"How can I compete," James said, and Clint bit down on his tongue so he wouldn't say anything that'd make James sound apologetic, again. There was another audible breath, over the phone, over miles. "Happy birthday, Clint. Wish I was there." 

“Yeah,” said Clint. “Me too. Then maybe I wouldn’t’ve locked myself out of the damned bar.” 

There was nothing else in the world that compared to hearing James laugh. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks, as ever, to CB for cheerleading delightfully, Dr G for picking me up on my punctuation, and Amy for asking the questions that improved this immeasurably. 
> 
> Next weekend I shall be going to a Viking festival and exploring a castle, and there's a bunch of stuff that needs rewriting on the last chapter, so it might be a little longer than usual until chapter 8 appears. I shall endeavour to make sure it's worth it. 
> 
> Thanks for reading. :D

It was a week later when Clint decided to investigate a little further. 

On his birthday he’d managed to pick the lock that’d trapped him out back of the bar, even with beer-unsteady hands, and had settled back in with Natasha, letting go of the idiot hope he’d been secretly nurturing - that James would somehow find his way clear to escape the surveillance of a government organisation and, what, hitchhike across the country just to wish Clint a happy 18th? No matter what Natasha said, no matter what midnight blue-tinted text exchanges risked leading him to believe, there were more important things to James than some circus kid who’d forced a kiss on him, once. Clint’d swallowed his pride and drunk a couple more beers - that he’d bitterly regretted in the morning - and leaned on Natasha the whole way home. 

Mrs. Gunderson had left him a pie. 

Honestly, it’d been the best birthday he’d ever had, and when he’d finally left the bathroom in the morning he’d gone right out to buy himself a damned oven. If his experimentation over the week since was anything to go by, though, it was gonna be a while before he could return the pies. 

Now, he was back outside the bar, only in daylight, this time. It looked a hell of a lot skeevier than it did in the dark, and in the dark it looked like the worst sort of dive. Clint was wearing the oil-stained clothing he wore to work on his mower, a pair of workman’s boots he’d got at a thrift store that needed two pairs of socks to make them fit, and a ball cap he’d pulled down low over his forehead. He’d gone a couple days without shaving, and he figured he looked convincing enough to pass for adulthood, to look a little like someone looking for work. He slouched inside and ordered himself a beer, sitting at the bar with it and amusing himself by flicking bar-top peanuts into empty bottles on the tables around the room. 

He didn’t look out of place there. It was barely past opening time and plenty of seats were already filled with the kind of guys who promised trouble with every line of them; the kind of guys that they’d always sent the clowns to deal with, in the circus. (Clowns were vicious motherfuckers, it was practically part of the job description.) Clint spent a few minutes scoping them out, deciding not to bother with the hulking crazy-eyed guy who had a huge black beard and a greasy ponytail, and then crossed the room to slide into a booth opposite a bald guy with a sour expression. 

“The fuck do you want?” 

Clint shrugged one shoulder, scowled right back, and for a second he was ten years old, wearing his older brother’s battered leather jacket, practicing curling his lip in the mirror so he could be just like Barney. Dreaming of maybe one day being tough enough so he could stand up to his dad. 

“Guy in the diner said there might be some work around here,” Clint said, straightening up a little to make the most of his height. “You know who I oughtta be speaking to?” 

The bald guy eyed him suspiciously. “What kinda work?” 

Clint made a face. “I look like the kinda guy that can be picky?” 

Baldy eyed him up and down, and then meaningfully drained his beer and set it aside. Clint rolled his eyes and shoved to his feet to get them both another, even though he’d barely touched his own - the beer they served tasted like shit. 

The guy looked a little friendlier when Clint returned. He took the beer and looked Clint up and down. 

“You want to speak to Ed Burns if you want construction,” he said. “Big guy, goatee beard, trucker hat. He comes in Wednesdays.” 

Clint scratched at his stubble, a little distracted by the unfamiliar feeling of it against his fingers. 

“Any idea if there’s anything I could get sooner?” 

The guy rubbed his thumb against his lips, considering for a second. 

“There’s a guy comes around here sometimes,” he said after a moment. “Gold watch, fancy suit. He offers work to some of the guys here.” 

“What kind of work?” Clint dropped his tone low to match the other man’s, leaning in a little closer. 

“Yeah, he’s never real specific about that,” the man said. He shrugged as he took a swig of his beer. “Never trust a guy who wears his wealth on his wrist,” he said, like it was a common saying, like something Clint ought to’ve heard. 

Clint nodded and saluted the guy with his beer, leaving the other he’d bought for himself on the table as he slid out and crossed back to the bar. 

It wasn’t all that much, but at least he knew he was in the right place to find out about this Egorov guy, maybe get some idea of what he was doing in town. Clint drained the beer and made a face at the taste, sliding off the bar stool and making his way to the door, so dazzled by the light outside that he walked right into the guy outside of it, slamming their shoulders together. 

“Shit,” he said. “Sorry.” 

Cool green eyes looked him up and down, and Clint felt his stomach tie into a knot at the sight of the familiar pale hair, the perfect suit. He ducked his head a little, so the brim of his cap would shade his face. 

“Sorry,” he said again. 

“Where’re you going in such a hurry?” Egorov said, his tone approaching amused. “Late for work?” 

Clint snorted. “I wish.” 

“Are you looking?” His pale eyes flicked over Clint, head to toe, a purely assessing glance; Clint squared his shoulders and stood a little straighter, trying to unobtrusively flex his muscles, although he wasn’t sure that he managed precisely subtle. “I could use someone with your - skills.” 

“What would you need me to do?” Clint asked, wishing in vain for a helpful recording device - it wouldn’t exactly be subtle to fish out his phone. 

“Oh, nothing too taxing,” Egorov said airily. “Security work, shall we say.”

Clint folded his arms across his chest. “I can’t afford to get into trouble,” he said, and Egorov’s mouth curled into a humorless smile. 

“I have the resources to avoid trouble,” he said, and pulled a business card out of his pocket, tossing it to rest on Clint’s forearm. “Let me know if you’re interested.” 

Clint scowled at his back as he turned and disappeared into the bar, but it dissolved into a smile when he heard a soft bark, and he looked around to see Egorov’s dog grinning up at him. Clint immediately dropped to his knees to pet him, the dog pushing his big head into Clint’s hands like he was as touch-starved as Clint was. Friendly as he was, the dog wasn’t in the best condition; his coat was dull and thinning in patches, and when Clint ran his hands along his sides he could practically count the dog’s ribs. There wasn’t even a collar, just a loop of leash wrapped around his neck and tied loosely to a streetlight. 

It was almost like Egorov _wanted_ the dog to escape. 

Clint glanced up and down the street, but this part of town wasn’t exactly bustling, not at this time of day. There was no one around to see him as he loosened the leash from around the streetlight, eased it off over the dog’s head. His truck was a couple streets away from the bar, and the dog trotted along at his heels the whole way, grinning his delighted grin at the sky, at the trash blowing happily along the street, at Clint. Mostly at Clint. 

“Man,” Clint said, “you’re just dumb as a box of rocks, huh?” 

As matted as his coat was, the dog’s ears were still silky soft under his hand. 

There was an old tin bath in the back of Clint’s barn, hung up on a hook and full of spiders. He ushered them about their business, seeing them off into the undergrowth. The bath he set out on the porch, running a hose through the kitchen window so he could make sure the water was warm enough; it was for the best, since half of it ended up all over him. The dog seemed kind of dubious about the whole experience, nosing at bubbles and attempting to climb out of the bath so many times that Clint wound up practically in there with him, one arm draped around his neck while he attempted to finger-comb tangles out with the other. All the parts of him that he managed to keep dry ended up soaked anyway when the dog climbed out of the bath and shook himself vigorously, plopping down on his backside as soon as he was done and panting up at Clint like he was laughing. 

Clint filled a cereal bowl with water and a paper plate with the hamburgers he’d been set on for lunch; it wasn’t like he was ever without a frozen pizza, and the oven didn’t even smell like burnt plastic any more. “You’re lucky I like you,” Clint told him. 

Honestly, though, lying on his inflatable mattress with the dog sprawled across the foot of it, tail thumping a regular beat against his legs, he was pretty sure he was the lucky one. 

*

The morning held a definite chill, sneaking under the doors and tangling around Clint’s ankles. He was gonna have to look at getting a few more blankets for his bed, maybe an electric blanket for the dog. Clint left him napping in a nest he’d made out of Clint’s clothes, figuring it was probably best to keep him out on the farm for a little while, since he was on the lam. 

Fall was coaxing gentle colours out of the treetops now, and it was early enough that Clint could see his breath. The truck gently protested the cooler air, whining a couple times before the engine turned over. After he’d got himself some coffee and a breakfast sandwich Clint considered driving to the next town over, in case the pet store accused him of abetting a fugitive, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he was hauling kibble from the store to his truck and someone yelled his name. 

Babs’ tracksuit, this time, was some kinda gold velour. Clint regretted that sunglasses had never really been a thing he’d bothered to own. She crossed the road to where he was, standing on the asphalt like she expected the traffic to arrange itself around her; it was a good thing that this early on a weekend there was never any traffic to speak of. 

“How’re you settling?” she asked, patting him familiarly on the side. 

Clint leaned back against the side of his truck and thought about that for a moment. Thought about the range he’d cobbled together at the farm, and the dog out there waiting for him. About having a usual order and knowing people’s names. About James and Natasha, sure - but he was starting to think more about how they’d fit in here. About setting up rooms for them to come stay. 

“Y’know what,” he said, with a slow sunny grin, “it’s a nice place. It’s starting to feel kinda like home.” 

“That’s great,” she said. “I sure hope this place stays nice enough for you.” 

“What do you mean?” 

Her face clouded over, and for the first time in his admittedly limited experience of her, Babs looked old. 

“That Egorov clown is looking to buy up the land between here and Mapleton, set up some cheap housing and some kinda outlet mall. Like the folks in Sioux City are just achin’ to move out into the back of beyond, here. He’s a slumlord in the making, and I’m not looking to let him horn in on the wildlife preserve so’s he can bring Chick-fil-A to the locals like some kinda Original Chicken Messiah.” 

“There’s some legal protection against that though, right?” 

Babs snorted. “Oh, sure. Kid, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that there’s no red tape you can’t get through. And the kind of money Egorov is flashing around will buy an awful lot of scissors.” 

Clint made a face and slumped back a little, and Babs pulled on a smile with a visible effort and reached up to clasp his shoulder, shaking him a little. 

“Don’t look so glum,” she said. “I’m making sure to be a right royal pain in his ass about it all. Mapleton’s mayor’s a brown-nosing lapdog, but I can throw my weight around with the best of them, and he’ll have an easy ride of it over my dead body.” 

Whatever response Clint might’ve made was interrupted by the revving of a truck’s engine, something far bigger and meaner than Clint could afford. He snapped his head around, got a glimpse of a crazy-eyed face half-hidden behind a big black beard, and threw himself forward without even thinking about it, knocking Babs out of the way and barely avoiding getting hit himself. 

“Holy shit,” he said, levering himself to his feet and ignoring the sting of gravel that was embedded in his palms, the long graze along his forearm. “Are you okay?” 

Babs’ glasses had flown off and shattered in the road, and she’d lost one of her clip-on earrings. It looked like the thick velour had done a decent job of protecting her, but when Clint helped her to her feet she was favouring her left ankle in a way that had him insisting that she let him drive her to the hospital out in Ida Grove. He called the sheriff when they were en-route and had him meet them there, leaving Babs in his capable hands after giving a brief statement about what he’d seen. When he left Babs was sitting in a padded chair like a queen on a throne, spitting mad and vowing vengeance while a long-suffering nurse tried to wrap her ankle. 

Clint drove back out to the farm with his mind working furiously, trying to figure out what in the hell he was going to do. He was so distracted that he didn’t even notice the black truck pulled round by the barn until he’d already climbed out of the driver’s seat and was halfway to his porch. 

The click of the safety coming off a gun, though. It was a hell of a thing for focusing the mind. 

Clint froze, and slowly raised his hands, fear squeezing the nape of his neck like an unrelenting hand. Everything James and Natasha had worked to drum into his head had his muscles tensing, his raised hands clenching, but unless they stepped a little closer… 

“Is that a gun in your hand,” he said, “or are you just happy to see me?” 

“You are a child,” Egorov said precisely from behind Clint; the sound was coming through the aid in his left ear, and he could see movement from his right, which meant there were at least two of them. “I’m not sure precisely what you think you will achieve by standing against me.” 

“If I’m a child,” Clint said, “then why d’you need two men and a gun to take me on?” 

There was a huff of aggravated breath, and Clint suddenly and viscerally and absurdly missed James; not because he would take these guys out with extreme prejudice - although he would - but because he didn’t want to die without having seen him again. 

That feeling of never being able to have enough time with a person, he thought, was probably something like love.

“You are a thorn in my side,” Egorov said, easing forward and to the side just enough to become visible in Clint’s periphery. Clint spun on his heel and grabbed at Egorov’s wrist, slapping the gun out of his hand ‘cos he’d never quite mastered the twisting motion that would’ve left it in his. Egorov screamed, a short, sharp yelp of sound, and Clint bared his teeth in a vicious grin. 

“That’s why you never keep your finger on the goddamn trigger, dumbass,” he said.

The blow came from nowhere, from behind Clint and to the right, and he staggered forward even as he tried to spin around. Egorov was too occupied with his broken finger to be of much help, but the guy from the bar didn’t seem to need it. Clint was almost grown into his shoulders, was muscled from weeks of physical work, and he’d been trained by the best; unfortunately, taken off balance and by surprise, the sheer size of the other guy won out.

Clint slammed a punch into the side of the guy’s head but all that seemed to do was hurt Clint’s hand and make the man madder, and Clint was on his back on the dry grass before he knew it, the man’s huge meaty fist sinking into Clint’s side so hard he was almost certain he felt something crack. He hooked an arm across his body and grabbed the guy’s opposite wrist so that when Clint heaved him off he couldn’t brace himself, falling awkwardly to the floor with a loud grunt. He was up again in seconds though and Clint was a little slower getting moving, something in his chest causing a grating, grinding pain that he didn’t want to think about. 

The boot in the side didn’t help. 

It was nowhere close to dignified, but Clint hauled himself away on his hands and knees, finding breathing was a little easier when he was hunched in on himself. If he could get the space for it he was almost certain he’d be able to get to his feet, but he clearly hadn’t hurt the other guy enough to keep him down. Heavy footsteps came after him, and Clint was bracing himself for another boot to the side or his unprotected head when his fumbling fingers met something cold and hard buried in the grass. When his attacker grabbed Clint’s shoulder and hauled him around, Clint’s hand came up and the remnant of brick from the old tumbledown wall came up with it, slamming into the guy’s jaw hard enough that the whole thing shifted sideways; Clint could see his eyes cloud over before he collapsed to the ground. 

It took him a minute to roll over, get to his hands and knees, and he wasn’t sure he could move any further from there. He stayed there for a minute, his head hanging down, breathing as deeply as was possible with the way his ribs felt, and he honestly felt a little like crying when another set of footsteps approached. 

“Can you just give me a minute?” he said, hopeless, and he was ashamed of the way that his voice cracked in the middle. 

“Get up or I’ll shoot you,” Egorov said, precisely, and Clint sat back on his heels - no sudden movements - and contemplated the effort of standing. 

“You’re maybe gonna have to,” he said, and then there was a volley of barking from the porch, a growl that made all the hairs on Clint’s neck stand up on end. 

“Stay!” he yelled, with the little breath he could manage, “Lucky, _stay!”_ Egorov didn’t seem like the kind of guy that’d bother training his dog, though, and he heard the thud of four feet racing across the grass. 

Clint threw himself forward, disregarding everything that hurt in favour of grabbing for Lucky, just about managing to grab him around the chest and at the scruff of his neck where his hackles were raised, getting dragged forward himself before Lucky stopped, still rumbling with those bloodthirsty growls, his legs braced and his head lowered. 

“I believe that’s my dog,” Egorov said, and Clint laughed - even with everything, Clint couldn’t not laugh. 

“You want me to let him go and see what happens?” 

“I want you to stay out of my business.” It was sharp, and final, and there was no question of the threat. And there was no way in hell it was going to happen. Clint opened his mouth around the taste of blood - not sure exactly what he was going to say but knowing that it was gonna result in more pain - when Egorov’s heard jerked around and barely a moment later he took off for the car, scrambling in and gunning the engine loud enough even for Clint to hear it over the thudding of his pulse in his ears. 

“Fuck,” he said, low and breathless, because his lungs weren’t exactly inclined to inflate all the way, his chest pulsing with pain in time with the darkness flashing around the edges of his vision. 

His aids finally caught the welcome sound of sirens just before he was claimed by the darkness. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With so very, very many thanks to all the people who have read and commented; to Dr G, for the very helpful beta; to CB for cheerleading and emotional support and to Amy for making this so much better than it started. 
> 
> You guys are amazing, and I am very lucky.

Clint woke to dim light and deja-vu, and he blinked at the familiar colour of the curtain for a while before he slowly recalled Babs issuing directives, her hospital bed-side throne framed by medical blue. 

“Fuck,” he concluded, noting through molasses how even that brief exclamation hurt his ribs like hell. There was movement, too fast for his brain to track, and then there was red hair and wide hazel eyes, slowly resolving into something he could recognise as a face. 

“Nat,” he managed, pleased, and he thought maybe the weird feeling in his cheeks was gradual progress towards a smile. “What’re you -” 

He was distracted from his question when he saw movement in his periphery, and he focused all of his mental effort on turning his head. It took a couple of moments of slow blinking before the dark shape made sense to him, and a couple more before he could believe what he was seeing and process it into delight. 

“Hi James,” he breathed, “oh hey, hi.” 

James was watching him with dark eyes, his arms crossed over his chest and his jaw clenched. He was looking at Clint in a way that seemed so familiar, although it took him some time to process the context - he rubbed his thumb across his fingers, missing the bowstring there, and then realised that it was how James had always looked at the obstacle course. Like it was a challenge; like it was the only thing that mattered. Clint didn’t know how to understand that, not right then. 

Instead he looked back at Nat - gleeful that he could manage it without turning his face away from James - and saw that she was talking. He curled his finger against his leg - because lifting it to his ear to sign for his aids was something with way too many steps for his brain-function - and James walked forward and bent to reach past his head, retrieving Clint’s aids from whatever dimension existed outside what he could see, like magic. 

“Ta-da,” Clint said, solemn, and James’s mouth curled fractionally into something that wouldn’t count as a smile on anyone else. 

James moved to push the aids into Clint’s hand, but he closed it into a fist and pouted, or intended to pout; he had no idea what his face was actually doing, because everything was fuzzy and playing at half speed. 

“Please?” he said, and there was a moment where James looked startled - like he didn’t expect Clint to trust him like that, which was dumb, because Clint - 

His train of thought stopped, caught behind hard and warm, and it took him a moment to realise that Natasha had pressed her hand across his mouth. There was movement near his ears, his aids put in place carefully and, when they were settled, switched on. 

“Inside voice,” Natasha said, as soon as he could hear again. “Shh.” 

He nodded, his lips brushing against her fingers, and she took her hand away from his mouth and brushed it against his cheek instead. 

“Now, ptichka,” she said, “we have some things to tell you. Are you awake enough to listen?” 

“Sure,” Clint said, immediately undermining himself with a huge yawn. 

“It can wait,” James said, a low growl by Clint’s head.

“But I cannot.” Natasha perched on the edge of Clint’s bed, and Clint made a soft noise of pain as he tried to shuffle his legs further aside, give her a little more room - he was liking this hospital stay so much more than the last one. James, scowling, dragged the bedside chair into Clint’s line of sight and dropped down into it, folding his arms across his chest, and Clint drank in the sight of him like summer roots drank rainfall. It took Natasha clearing her throat twice and then leaning so her head was between the two of them before Clint blinked into attention. 

“We suspect you are in danger,” she said, and Clint snorted, looking at the hospital equipment that surrounded him pointedly. She rolled her eyes. “We suspect you are in danger you didn’t walk deliberately into yourself,” she said, and this time it was James with a humorless laugh. 

“Kinda did,” James said. 

“Brock Rumlow is no longer in SHIELD custody,” Natasha said, and - his brain running slow as it was - it took Clint a second to place the name. 

“Oh,” he said, after the second was through, fear running through him like a slow river. “Fuck.” 

James leaned forward, maybe in reaction to the tremble in his voice, and carefully caught Clint’s fingers. Maybe he was going for Clint’s attention but he caught his fingers, too, and Clint liked the way they fit together, fumbled toward winding them a little tighter so they would stay for a while. 

“We’ve got you,” James said. “You don’t have to worry.” 

“Because the whole of the strike team were arrested, or missing, or are now AWOL, SHIELD have been forced to put their trust in James.” Natasha shot James a small and mischievous grin at his glare. “We have been training together for months, and now we are to go on our first mission.” 

Clint couldn’t help the way his fingers tightened around James’s at that - he’d literally just got to see him again. 

“Hey.” James’s voice was softer than Clint had ever heard it. “You think we don’t have your back, gink? It’s a milk run, testing me out, and so long as Natasha keeps up the reports about my progress she can do the whole thing herself, no problems.” 

“You’re gonna stay?” 

“He’s going to stay,” Natasha said, scooting off the bed and landing on her feet. “And I am clearly chopped liver, so I’m going to leave.” 

Clint made a noise of protest, and she smiled and leaned forward to kiss his forehead. 

“I’ll be back,” she said. “I will see you soon.” 

“Thanks for taking care of me,” he said, through a yawn that cracked his jaw. “Love you.” 

“Durak,” she said, soft. He couldn’t make more than an attempt at reading her expression, but he thought that it was good. 

As she left noiselessly, Clint yawned again, his eyes heavy. 

“You should sleep,” James said. 

“Promise you’ll stay?” He didn’t want to wake up alone again in the hospital’s not-quite-darkness, distant beeping the only way of marking time. 

“‘Til the end of the line,” James said, and he sounded kind of odd with it, like there was a weight to the words that Clint didn’t understand. 

“Okay, love you,” Clint said muzzily, and fell deep into the darkness of sleep, followed down by the confused, conflicted expression in James’s eyes. 

*

For all that he’d promised he’d stay, after that James was as good as a ghost. 

Every morning, after the hospital released him into James’s capable care, Clint woke up in his brand new, hastily assembled bed. The left leg at the bottom was wobbly as hell, and he was a little concerned about how well it was going to stand up when his ribs healed up enough for him to actually move during the night. Right now he was sleeping between carefully stacked pillows, some of them still in their plastic wrappings in case his patch job on the roof didn’t hold up; the rustling would've kept him up, even if his ribs had let him sleep much in the first place. 

The place was full of noises - rain on tarpaulin, distant dripping, the wind whistling through the places where roof tiles ought to be. He even startled himself awake with his own snoring, his broken nose taped up with sticking plaster and a constant dull ache. The creaks of the settling house and the noises of nocturnal creatures outside formed an undisturbed soundtrack, and if it wasn't for the meals and pills that arrived like clockwork he wouldn't've known there was anyone else in the house at all. 

Natasha had sent him a text message to explain that Egorov wasn’t going to be a problem, neatly framed by CCTV footage from cameras that Clint could appreciate now. James had come to read it over his shoulder, glowering fiercely, and then had disappeared back downstairs again. 

They weren't really talking all that much. Clint was going a little crazy with it. 

As far as he could tell, James was sleeping out on the porch on the inflatable mattress. It probably wasn't all that much colder than it was inside the house. Someone had bought Clint a new duvet - the purple fleece cover had been a nice touch - and at least two of his warmest blankets had disappeared out onto the porch with his uninvited visitor. There was no way it was comfortable, no way it was preferable to being just about anywhere else. 

Every morning he expected James to be gone when he hauled himself out of bed and commenced the slow shuffle to the bathroom; every morning he came back to his room to find steaming coffee and a plate of toast. By the fourth day he'd angrily unwrapped his ribs, discarding the bandages and awkwardly clambering into the bath for a cold and dribbly shower. He'd come back to find that his sheets had been changed for him and a new set of strapping had been laid out, all neat. 

On the fifth day he finally lost patience with it. It took him twenty minutes, and he sweated through his shirt, but he made it all the way down to the bottom of the stairs. He rested against the wooden wall for a minute, waiting for the pain to die down enough that he could move on. 

Even from where he was he could see the work that had been done. The sunlight pouring through the big bay window in the front of the house fell on curls of fresh sawdust, the tiny motes sparking golden fire in the air. Stacked by the wall was a neat pile of floorboards, and already half of the floor had been pulled up and replaced. The hallway he was standing in had been stripped back to the bone and replastered, drying sweeps of mud brown arcing across the walls. The front door was standing open, letting in the fresh fall air, and from somewhere out back of the house he could hear sawing, regular and steady and syncopating with the elevated beating of his heart. 

Curling an arm across his stomach, Clint made his careful way back along the hallway to the kitchen, where skilled hands had finished putting in the countertops and fitted his new sink. It was almost a functioning _house_ , at this point, and the thought was weird and uncomfortable in much the same way his 18th birthday had been. He'd felt like a grown up for so much of his life - getting him and Barney meals, going out with Barney on jobs, earning some money of his own - that it was unsettling to find that there were new ways he could be jolted by the fact that he was officially an adult now when he still felt so much like a kid. 

Clint shuffled out onto the back porch as the sawing stopped, blinking out at the sunlight that was turning the tops of trees into beacons around where the shadow of the house stretched out long over the grass. 

It was early enough that there was still a mist rising. Early enough that there was a chill in the air, and James had stolen one of Clint's heavy plaid shirts to pull on over his Henley, but he'd already rolled the sleeves up to his elbows. He was standing by a sawhorse he'd clearly hauled out of the garage, cobwebs still draped around its legs, and squinting down at the scrap of pizza box that Clint'd been writing his measurements on. 

"You gonna leave me anything to do?" Clint called. He'd swear - he would _swear_ \- that there was a moment when James's expression brightened to see him. Moments like that were the places hope found to live in, even if his expression straightened itself out before anything could quite catch hold. 

"You're supposed to be resting," James said, and Clint rolled his eyes and sat himself gingerly on the porch swing, which barely creaked under his weight. He looked up to see the newly bolted rings that held it up, and maybe hope lived there, too. 

James looked different in his garden, in the gently warming morning light. More faceted, maybe, like those crystals people hung up in windows. 

"I'm resting," Clint said, awkwardly moving his whole body so he could tug the cushions into a better back rest for him, his ribs still resisting anything that resembled twisting. "I promise I'll stay right here and watch you, no moving at all." 

“Promises are a sucker’s game,” James said. 

“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?” 

James flashed him something that looked a hell of a lot like a smile. 

“So did you have anything to do with the cameras?” Clint asked the question casually, but he wasn’t so easy as all that about it. Somehow it seemed like it’d feel different, if it had been James; Natasha had never really tried to hide that she kept secrets from him, even if he had no clue how many secrets there were. 

James looked up at the trees. “I didn’t put them there,” he said. “I made sure they’re not there anymore.” 

Clint would’ve said something else but he was distracted by barking coming around the side of the house. A blur of yellow fur lunged for the steps and then skidded to a halt, quivering, as James barked his name. 

“You’ve been training him?” Clint asked, delighted. James shrugged one shoulder.

“He’s smart.” 

“Damn right he is,” Clint said, and patted the cushion next to him. Lucky came over - his front paws coming to rest on the cushion set the swing to swaying, and the dog took ungainly steps back and forth as he tried to push himself up. It would’ve been impossible for Clint to heave him up, with the state of his ribs, but he definitely considered it; James rolled his eyes and mounted the steps, grabbing Lucky around the middle and hauling him onto the swing and - carefully - across Clint’s lap without obvious effort. 

“Thanks,” Clint said, grinning up into James’s face which was - shit, so close, and he would swear he wasn’t imagining how James’s eyes lowered to rest on Clint’s mouth. Not for long, not for much more than a second, but it sent a thrill of victory through him all the same. 

“Knock knock!” Someone hollered from the front of the house, and James sprang back like a startled cat. A few moments later Babs appeared around the corner, leaning on a crutch, piled high with foil-covered dishes on her other arm, and wearing a pair of aggressively floral sweatpants. She sized them up - the way Clint was sprawled on the swing, how far James had managed to duck away from him and how flustered he looked - and dumped all the food into James’ arms. He obediently disappeared with it into the kitchen, and she leaned down to buss Clint’s cheek. 

“I see why you weren’t interested in Kyle,” she said, with a truly appalling eyebrow waggle, and Clint nearly broke something laughing. James reemerged with a chair Clint hadn’t been aware he owned and a dark frown. 

Once Babs was settled - her shirt was stretched tight over her chest and read ‘Too Young to be a Grandma but HERE WE ARE’, and it looked from the cracking of the letters like she’d been wearing it for years - she hustled James off again to make her some coffee, and crossed her feet on the swing beside Clint. He focused on the dog sprawled across his lap, a little disconcerted by her gimlet stare. 

“So I guess I have to thank you twice over,” she said. “Thank the good lord you’re an idiot kid.” 

Clint looked up, opened his mouth to protest, but there wasn’t much of a defense he could mount. He shrugged after a second, ruffling Lucky’s ears. 

“I like it here as it is,” he said. “Couldn’t be bothered moving.” 

“Glad to hear it,” she said. “We could use more of your type of idiot around, and I’ll expect you to keep coming to the town council meetings. Maybe get you standing up on the stage, one of these days.” 

Clint blanched, and tried to hide it. “I’m - not much of a one for the spotlight,” he said, and she eyed him shrewdly. 

“Yeah, I figured as much. So I brought this out to you instead of making some kind of show of it.” 

She pulled a thin ball-chain from her pocket, a key hanging off the end of it, and he took it and looked at it curiously. 

“Key to the city,” she said, “such as it is.” 

“...Seriously?” 

She snorted, and tugged on the chain in his hand. “Well symbolically, anyway. I’m pretty sure that opens the storage shed behind City Hall, but I’m certain I’ve never used it. It’s a metaphor.” 

“A metaphor for what?” James said from the doorway, and Clint made grabby hands at the coffee he was carrying, snatching it and letting it warm the chain against his palm. 

“For belonging,” she said. “Don’t give a good goddamn what you’re running from, Clint - you’ve got a place here with us.” 

It felt like a promise - not a sucker’s game, no matter what James might say, but instead somewhere solid he could stand. 

*

Winter sharpened the edges of Fall breezes over the next couple of weeks, and Clint felt every goddamn one of them whistling through the cracks in his ribs. James gave up chasing him back to bed after the second day, and let Clint limp around after him like a puppy, like Lucky. 

It wasn't entirely the boredom, although that played a big part in it. Even a surly assassin was better company than no company at all, and Clint worked hard on drawing him out, working to prise more than a few words out of him at a time. Felt like he'd won a medal every time he made James smile, and they seemed to come quicker and easier the longer he stayed. Clint was having more trouble with his ears than he had for a while - hit his head too hard, maybe, when he'd hit the ground - and talking to James was helping him polish up his rusty lip-reading skills again.

A lot of it was how James looked, though, and Clint wasn't ashamed to admit it. It wasn't like he'd made an effort to hide how he felt, what he wanted, and it wasn't his fault if it turned out carpentry got him going when it was James's hands shaping and planing the wood. 

"Do you mind me watching?" Clint asked one afternoon, when the efficiency of morning had settled into the almost meditative work James took on when the sun started to ease down. James was laying more floorboards in a room that they'd likely eat in, driving in the nails with a skilled flick of his wrist. He sat back on his heels and looked over at Clint, wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, a poor effort at pushing his hair out of the way. He had the decency not to ask why he'd mind, not to pretend he wasn't aware of the constant dance around things they didn't talk about. 

"No," he said eventually, and his eyes looked almost blue in the afternoon sun. "I like the way you look at me." 

James ducked back to his work quickly, his shoulders a tense line, so Clint didn't even make an attempt to answer him. He held those words close, though, stuffed them into the space behind his ribcage where - when he'd healed up a little more - he could maybe keep them safe. 

Now Clint wasn't spending the whole time flat on his back, time seemed to start slipping by a little faster. They finished up all the food that Babs had brought over, and she invited them to dinner so they could return all the pots. James drove Clint but he wouldn't come in, promising he'd swing back by in a few hours. Considering his experience of Babs - loud and unabashed and teasing as she was - Clint wasn't much surprised. 

Turned out she hadn't cooked any of the food, sitting in an armchair in a living room that was full of nicknacks and tchotchkes, photos of her extended family crowding every available wall. In the kitchen a son-in-law and two daughters slaved over a hot stove, and produced something that tasted better than anything Clint had eaten in years. 

He could see what people meant about home-cooked meals. He'd chatted with Babs in the living room while hilarity went on in the kitchen, and there was something about the smells and the sounds that tugged at something inside him that he'd never really known. He had an oven now, and there was a thrift shop in town; Clint resolved to see if he could find any more recipe books there, 'cos he would bet anything that James had never known it, too. 

When he washed up outside again he was floating on a cloud of family feeling and wine. He tucked his hands into the pockets of the coat that Natasha had bought for him and grinned just as soon as he heard the familiar sound of his truck. James flicked on the light in the cab as he drew up - like Clint wouldn't recognise him in the darkness, or deafened, or blindfolded most likely - and he had his window open. Clint swung himself up onto the running board and bent to lean through the window, and James was smiling at him like he was an idiot; he must've been, because he couldn't resist leaning in to taste James's mouth. 

It was longer this time, and slower, and James didn't tense up but just eased himself away like it hurt him to do it. Clint licked his lips. 

"You've been drinking," James said flatly, and Clint sighed and hopped off the truck, circling around so he could clamber into the passenger seat. 

"You know I'd do it sober," he said, "if you wanted me to." 

"Clint -" James started, and Clint rolled his head against the headrest, turning to look at him, at the way his eyes were just a thin ring of colour around deep black. 

"I don't care what you say to me," Clint said, cutting him off, reaching out to cup his cheek and lay a thumb against his lips, "as long as you make it true." 

James's lips parted a little against Clint's thumb and then closed again. Almost like a kiss. Clint let out a breath and let his hand drop, slumping back against his seat, and watched the darkness rolling past the window as James drove him home. 

*

He wouldn't say he was exactly hungover, the next morning, but the world seemed a little less welcoming than usual and it took him longer than it should have to make it out of bed. Some guy had come to see about the furnace in the basement but he'd mostly recommended replacing it entirely, grudgingly clanging a few things together when Clint insisted. The icy air in the house was almost painful and Clint heaved his blankets off the bed and wrapped them around himself to take the trip down under the house. Usually it responded to a swift kick, and a couple hard jabs had it reluctantly gusting out a breath of warm air. 

As he wandered back up the stairs it occurred to him that usually James would've taken care of that himself, and he got a sinking, cold feeling in his stomach. He checked in on the maybe-dining room, looked out on the porch, and only registered the heavy, regular thumping when he had his phone in his hand and was halfway to calling Natasha. 

James was out behind the house, chopping logs with an axe Clint had found in the barn. It looked a hell of a lot shinier and sharper than it had before, and the wood was falling into a pile of neat logs. James had clearly been at this a while, a plaid shirt tied around his waist and his sleeves folded up around his elbow; he was sweating, even in the frigid air. He looked - Jesus, he looked beautiful, like something unreal, strong and brooding and dangerous. Clint's mouth was dry. 

All he could think to want was to see James smile. 

"I'm sorry," he said, when there was a pause between the blows of the axe. He felt like an idiot, even as he treasured the memory of lips against lips; even as he tried to read into what he’d seen in James’s eyes. 

The axe thumped as it dropped from James's fingers and hit the ground. 

"I'm sorry," Clint said again, the words tripping over themselves on their way out of his mouth, and he backed up a couple of steps as James came towards him, "I shouldn't have - "

He was in the middle of being kissed before he even knew it had started, James's hand clenched tight in his hair and his mouth unrelenting, taking Clint apart with every movement of his lips. Clint's blankets dropped unregarded to lie on the frosty ground and he brought his hands up to tangle in James's hair instead, the chill air biting at his arms barely even noticed against the hungry heat of James's mouth. 

Clint had never been kissed like this; Clint never wanted to be kissed like this by anyone other than James. 

In the absence of anything to lean against they swayed against each other, Clint feeling like a clumsy kid as his hips rocked a little against James's. He had to pull away eventually, feeling light headed, feeling like his knees were going to give way. 

James ran metal fingertips gently over Clint's cheek. 

"I don't know how to want things the way I want you." 

He sounded - helpless. Lost, maybe, and Clint grabbed for his hand and wove their fingers tightly together, because whatever this was they were in it together. 

"How do you want me?" he asked, and James just looked at him for a second without speaking before he pulled Clint around and tugged him towards the house. 

They didn't make it as far as the bedroom. It would've taken too damned long, with Clint's ribs, with the way James couldn't seem to last more than a few seconds before he was pulled back to Clint's mouth. Instead they settled onto the inflatable mattress, James carefully lowering Clint down while they kissed before kneeling next to him, forearms braced either side of Clint's shoulders as his hair fell around Clint's face. 

The whole world might as well not exist while they were like this. 

James's cold hand ghosted over the bruises that still shaded black on Clint's chest, and Clint couldn't help the graceless swearing when his mouth moved down to Clint's neck, cold fingertips finding a nipple and playing there. The sharp edge of pain when he rocked his hips up made everything spark brighter, but it was nothing to the heat that rushed through him when James, unrelenting, held his hips down. 

It meant his arms were free, at least, and Clint went instantly for the hem of James's shirt, hauling it up inelegantly and almost getting it tangled in his hair. James shrugged it off and returned to Clint's mouth, almost making Clint bite his lip with the speed of it, and Clint had the fleeting thought that James was trying to stop him from seeing his face. It was like a shower of cold water, that thought, and he grabbed at James's hands where he was fumbling at Clint's waistband and held them still. 

"Hey," he said, pulling away as much as he could. James's expression was broken open, like armour had been torn away. Clint reached up to cup his cheek and James leaned into it, like he needed the support. 

They just looked at each other for a long moment, and there were a million things that needed to be said but Clint couldn't find the shape of any of them. Then James's face folded into determined lines, stubborn. 

"I want this," he said, and set his teeth against Clint's thumb, and that was it - like flashpaper. Clint slid his hand quickly down the skin of James's chest, cupping the front of his jeans for a second and grinding the heel of his hand there before he admitted to himself that there was no way the buttons could be undone one-handed. James looked dazed and swayed a little as Clint took his other hand away from his face, then groaned aloud when Clint succeeded in freeing his cock, wrapping his fingers around James's hard length. It was graceless and it was messy and it was over way too fast, precome easing the glide of his hand as James's eyes fluttered shut and he arched his hips, sinuous and filthy, thrusting only a few times before he shuddered and came all over Clint’s shirt. 

Clint managed to contort himself enough to haul it off over his head, bundling it up and chucking it aside before running his hand up James's side, watching with a whole lot of blissed out fondness - and a healthy dose of frustration - as James stretched, languid, and slowly blinked his eyes open. 

"Was that what you wanted?" Clint asked, and James answered easily. 

"You're what I want." 

He looked a little startled after he said it, like he hadn't meant to put it that way. Clint tried to be quiet, sucking in a breath, and wasn't sure he made a good job of it. 

"James - " he said, but he was cut off by a mouth against his - a mouth that quickly moved on, trailing lines of fire across his chest that meandered but headed always downwards. Clint grunted out a low noise as his stomach flexed, and he could feel James's mouth move into a smile against his skin. 

He wished he could see it, but not enough to do anything that would make James stop, his mouth moving now against the sensitive skin below Clint's belly button, brushing back and forth just too firmly to be ticklish, a spiralling sensitivity that coiled through Clint and arched his back without any conscious effort on his part. The movement hurt _so good_ , and he cried out when James's tongue ran up the side of his cock, hot and then almost instantly cold as the winter air met James's spit. It was a confusion of sensations, a push and a pull until Clint didn't know if he was going or - not coming, fuck, he was _not going to come_ , clenching his fists as James opened his mouth over Clint's cock and sank slowly down. 

Nothing had ever felt like this. 

Clint couldn't help rocking into the gentle pull of James's mouth, every movement an exquisite agony until it was finally too much, too hot, too _everything_ , and Clint forced out a garbled warning just before he came in James's mouth. 

"Oh fuck," he said, and he tangled his hand into James's hair again, now there was no danger of holding him still. "Oh fuck, James." 

James didn't respond, pressing his mouth to Clint's skin like he was mapping out routes he wanted to remember when he closed his eyes. Clint let out a long breath, every part of him melting into the mattress, and laughed a little up at the splintered ceiling of the porch. 

"Holy shit, that was good," he said, his voice slurring a little with the exhaustion that was creeping over him, a late night and an early morning, unaccustomed effort. "We've gotta do that forever." 

“No promises,” James mumbled against Clint’s skin as he made his way back up, Clint’s chest still heaving against his lips. 

“Sure,” Clint said, willing to give that much up if it got him this. He wound his fingers into James’s hair and tugged him up for another kiss, so much sweeter than anything without promises should be. “Sure, I’m good with that.” 

He would be, he promised himself, he clenched his fists and bargained, ‘cos there was no way in hell he was letting this go. 


End file.
